Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Watson has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 because our government has a strong belief not only that the rule of law should be respected but that those who choose to break the law should be held to account. The reintroduction of this bill demonstrates our commitment to upholding the rule of law in this country, and I make no apology for supporting a bill that requires registered organisations to operate within the law for the benefit of their members and not themselves.

This bill contains measures that were called for by the trade union royal commission, and there have been some important changes made since its first iteration in 2017. I think it's also important to note that this bill has been amended from earlier versions to reflect many of the concerns that were raised by members opposite. The measures in this bill are designed to ensure registered organisations in this country are working in the members' interests and always within the bounds of the law. The bill is also specifically designed to zero in on any organisations or individuals that are not doing the right thing by their members. The fact is that unions, employer organisations and their appointed officers have a privileged position, with many members placing a great deal of trust in them. Members expect them to act in their interests and to treat their positions with the respect they deserve. It's important to note that there are many registered organisations that are doing the right thing. There are many that are treating their members fairly, contributing in a positive way and abiding by the law. But this bill is not going to impact organisations that are already doing the right thing. It is only the organisations or officials that are doing the wrong thing, and that continue to do so, that will be affected. The bill applies equally to unions and employer organisations, and only to conduct occurring after the commencement of this bill.

I'd like to focus for a moment on schedule 1 of the bill, which will amend the act by expanding the circumstances in which an official of a registered organisation may be automatically disqualified from office. In addition, this schedule makes it a criminal offence for a person disqualified from holding office in a registered organisation from continuing to hold that office. The Federal Court will also be given further discretionary powers, to disqualify an official from holding office in certain circumstances. These amendments are important for improving public confidence in the integrity of registered organisations and to hold to account repeated law-breakers who are currently holding or significantly influencing the office of a registered organisation.

It's really unfortunate that this action is required but we know that some unions just do not take the rule of law seriously. We've heard in this place about how John Setka's militant mega union, the CFMMEU, has been fined more than $16 million—and counting—for breaking the law. The CFMMEU also has more than 2,000 breaches and 74 representatives currently before the courts. It's really not surprising then that a Federal Court judge described the CFMMEU as the most recidivist corporate offender in Australian history.

It makes me sad to say to the House that in my electorate on the Central Coast I have seen some of the behaviour we've come to expect from some of these militant unions and unionists. I've seen some of this behaviour first-hand, during campaigns on prepoll and on polling day. And I know I'm not alone. I note that the member for Boothby has publicly spoken about her experience. I commend her for speaking out and sharing her story. I think it needs to be said, I think we need to call this behaviour out and I think we need to take action. This is part of the reason that I'm speaking in support of this bill. I'm proud to be part of this government, which is taking this issue seriously and making sure that registered organisations, union and employer organisations and their officials operate within the law.

My volunteers and I have been subject to some appalling behaviour during the recent campaign, including when one of my volunteers was allegedly physically assaulted outside a polling booth by a person in a union-branded T-shirt. Others were incredibly subjected to verbal abuse that in some cases was not only downright offensive but also wildly inappropriate and defamatory. Members of the union and elected union officials who were working on polling booths and prepoll regularly cast aspersions about my volunteers, me and other local elected representatives, making highly offensive and derogatory comments on a number of occasions. When we called out this inappropriate behaviour—which, of course, if it was done or said in the school yard, or on the floor of an office, would be called out for what it is, bullying—the most common reaction that we got was for them to defend their actions and say, 'It was perfectly fine,' because we were Liberals. Therefore, it was okay.

When it got particularly bad—so bad that many members who were not campaigning for me, cringed as well—on more than one occasion, members of even the Labor Party, union representatives and their volunteers indicated that they didn't feel they were able to call out or to stand up to this inappropriate behaviour of union officials, because of their position. We had other members in union campaign T-shirts urinating in front of a young female member, who was on my campaign team. A number of my campaign posters were defaced, slashed and dumped outside our electorate office, which, of course, is almost par for the course these days. Union members in 'Change the rules' T-shirts were part of what appeared to be a planned attempt to shame me in public, chanting what were quite frankly disgusting comments about my character, in front of my two children, who, I might say, are eight and 10 years of age. Some of these comments were also part of a paid social media campaign on the Facebook and Instagram pages of New South Wales Labor.

Why did this happen? Well, it's because I dared to have a different view and I dared to speak up about it. Sadly, I know that the member for Boothby and I are not unique in our experiences. Many of our colleagues have had similar ones. I note, though, that it seems that in recent years this behaviour and this standard has gotten worse, not better.

I raise these experiences because I am committed to calling out this behaviour whenever it occurs. There is neither a need nor a defence for thuggery and intimidation, no matter where it occurs, and I make no apology for standing up to this behaviour in my electorate, at polling places and in this place. It is not enough for unions like the CFMMEU to say they have progressive policies and ideas, they have a policy about bullying in the workplace or equality. It is just not true. Their actions have to match what they say they support and believe. We know that some do, and some are doing the right thing. But some are not. Some are part of militant unions that show blatant disregard for their members and the law.

The standard you accept is the standard you walk by. Right now, by opposing this bill, members opposite are effectively saying they think that what is going on right now because the country is somehow acceptable. How can the Leader of the Opposition say publicly that he does not support the actions of John Setka? How can he call for his expulsion from the Labor Party but somehow not support legislation that would see someone such as John Setka, if he continued his unlawful behaviour, be expelled from his position as a union official?

On this side, we believe that the thuggish behaviour of militant unionists should be banned and there should be consequences for those who continue to act unlawfully. That is what this bill does—and members opposite are opposing it. On this side of the House, we are taking action on the militant unions in this country and those who act unlawfully time and time again. This behaviour is a danger to some employees and to our economy. Lawbreaking unions can, for example, increase the cost of roads, hospitals and schools by up to 30 per cent.

Members opposite, in opposing this, have some serious questions to answer. Why do they see the systematic lawbreaking that we have seen from unions like the CFMMEU as acceptable? Why is it appropriate for the Labor Party to continue to take $1 million a year from a union that seems to have a budget built in for fines? Are they on the side of Australians working hard to get ahead—or ae they on the side of militant unions and big union money? The bill will help unions and employer groups to work for their members and not for themselves. That is what we on this side of the House are about. I commend the bill to the House.

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

It is not unusual to find this government in breach of international laws that it has signed up to. We see it all the time when it comes to the treatment of people who come here seeking our help as refugees or asylum seekers. And we find it repeatedly in respect of industrial law as well. This government steps in and regulates the affairs of workers and their unions in a way that most other countries don't. And this government does not do that with companies either. We know why this government would want to do that. It is very obvious. It has been clear from the beginning that the government is engaged in a political battle with the opposition. And the government sees that the opposition gets a bit of a leg up from unions, so it uses its power to step in and say: 'We're going to see what we can do to fix that, to change the outcome of future elections by nobbling unions and stopping them from doing their job.' The government is pretty explicit about all that. But it then has the gall to come in here and say, 'We want to ensure integrity, and we're going to dress up our attack on the unions as being part of that.'

If the government really wanted to ensure integrity in Australia, we would have a federal anticorruption watchdog by now. People want it. The Greens have been pushing for it in this place for years. We don't have one because the government is not concern about ensuring integrity across the board. If it were, we would have rules in place that mean politicians and other elected officials such as judges, and high-ranking public servants, would all know that there was a watchdog looking over their behaviour. We could then keep a bit of a straight face when the government says it is concerned about ensuring integrity because the government would have ensured that, at least within the patch that it controlled directly, there was integrity. But we don't have that. Instead, we have allegations of taxpayers' money being misspent on water that wasn't there or billions of dollars being spent as we watch our rivers dry up or ministers seeking meetings and getting briefings about properties that they have an interest in. All of that happens time after time and the government does nothing about it. But, when it comes to working people coming together and organising, then the government jumps on that. It then says: 'No, it's okay; all we're trying to do is level the playing field. All we're trying to do is make sure that we treat unions in the same way that we treat corporations.'

There's a very big difference which the government doesn't seem to understand. For the government, everything is about being run for profit. Companies are run for profit and their directors are obliged by law to act in the best interests of their companies and maximise the amount of money that they make and comply with the law. That is what the Corporations Act requires them to do. Unions are run largely by volunteers because they are about workers coming together to advance their interests. If it were the case that there were somehow some equivalence between corporations and unions, corporations would be run on a not-for-profit basis largely by volunteers, right? That's point 1. Point 1 is to recognise that, when we talk about unions in this country, we are talking about organisations that are largely run—and should be run—by people who work in the industry affected, who've stuck their hands up and said, 'I want to spend my time looking after the people that I work alongside and to do things to advance their common interests, and we want to come together to do that.' That's who sits on union committees of management or boards around the country. Those are the people in the workplace who are sticking up their hands to say, 'Yes, I'll be a delegate,' or 'I'll be a shop steward.' Those are the people who are going to be targeted by this bill.

Again, if there were some equivalence between corporations and unions—which there's not, but let's say there were because that's the government's argument—then the government would be introducing legislation that mirrors this bill. The government would be introducing legislation that would give me, or any other citizen who doesn't like what a particular director is doing, the right to go and take them to court and apply to disqualify them because we have a sufficient interest in doing that, because we think that they are somehow in breach of the law. I tell you what: I look forward to the day when the government says, 'Corporations now have to be run in a way that allows every interested member of the public the right to start taking directors to court and seeking that they lose their jobs.' I'm not sure that the Business Council of Australia has twigged to that yet, if that's what the government has in mind.

But, of course, the government's not going to do that, because this isn't about equivalence. This is about a particular set of laws that are targeted at one side, not the other. If the government is serious about equivalence between corporations and unions, it may come as a shock to all of those proprietary limited companies around Australia that now they are going to be required to open their books and start publishing their accounts on the website in the way that unions have to and that all of that's now going to have to be made publicly available in a way it hasn't been before. But, best of all, if there is going to be equivalence, as the government has said, then all corporations are now going to be governed by committees of management where everyone can just go and join a corporation and then decide to run and vote for who gets to be in charge and who gets to be the managing director. Apparently, I can go and stand as the managing director of BHP. If the government is right that there's going to be an equivalence between corporations and unions, every interested member of the public can now go out and join a company, if it's in their area, start running for positions and be the director or the vice-president. It is going to be a very interesting world when the government legislates for unions and corporations to be exactly the same.

But, of course, that's not going to happen, because they are very different organisations. It's like saying a football club is the same as a company. It is not. They are groups of people who come together for very different purposes. One is about making a profit—because that's what the law says—and the other is about coming together to look after their interests. That's why there have been separate systems of regulation.

What will this new law mean for those people, for those largely volunteers, who come together to form unions to act in their own interests? It will mean that—unlike with corporations—a minister or, as I said, a person with sufficient interest, can now say, 'I don't think you're complying with the law; I'm going to go to court to make you prove that you're entitled to be there.' This, as the previous speaker said, is something that can now be incredibly easily weaponised. It means that, if someone comes into a workplace and says, 'I think you're underpaying; I want to come in and check whether or not you are paying people properly', there's nothing stopping that employer from saying: 'That person is being a bit too pesky and is asking to see my wage records. I reckon they might have fallen foul of this legislation, so I'm going to bring a case that they're no longer entitled to be a union official and I'll tie them up in court. I have more resources than them so I'll take them to court.' That's how this could be weaponised.

For people who choose to be union officials or union employees, the threshold as to whether they can keep their job is now going to be very different to what it is for company directors. One of the provisions, for example, relates to people who've fallen foul of offences where is there is a penalty of five years or more. They don't have to have spent five years in jail; that's just what has to be what goes along with the offence. So if you've driven without a licence or been involved in a car accident or infringed some part of some rule that means that you are now exposed to that—it could have absolutely nothing to do with your ability to be a good union official, and it may be that the magistrate or the judge in that case didn't impose a custodial sentence on you—you'd still find yourself falling foul of this law. That doesn't happen for company directors. That's just going to happen for people who are in unions.

It's also been said, 'This is going to ensure compliance with our industrial laws; it's going to ensure that people comply with them.' At the start, I mentioned international law. Australia has been routinely singled out by the UN's International Labour Organization for having laws about industrial action and about bargaining that do not comply with international laws. What does that mean? It means that, if you are a worker in this country and you want to take action to increase your wages, you have to jump through a series of hoops here and fill out forms and potentially go to the Fair Work Commission in a way that you don't have to in other places; in a way that has been described by the UN's body as being unduly restrictive and impinging on international conventions—and it does. We do things that other countries don't ask people to do.

If there's an issue that arises at work—like someone's just got sacked because they spoke up and asked for higher wages or there's an issue where you think, 'Something's just not right and I'm not coming back into the workplace until it's fixed'—and you walk out or half-a-dozen nurses say, 'I'm sorry; we're walking off the job until this problem is fixed,' that is potentially unlawful industrial action. If you've taken industrial action and you've filed the paperwork and it turns out that there is an error in your paperwork, that is potentially unlawful industrial action. Also, under this legislation, all of that could now be the grounds for getting rid of the union itself, for cancelling the registration of the union itself.

The legislation has words in it that, on some reading, might—if you're not familiar with this area—seem to be reasonable. On page 19 of the bill, proposed section 28G subsection (ii) says—and I am paraphrasing: 'This subsection covers industrial action other than protected industrial action that had or is likely to have a substantial adverse effect on the welfare of the community or part of the community.' You might think, 'Well, what could be objectionable about that?' If you go back and read the decisions of how words like this have been interpreted by the Fair Work Commission, a bunch of bus drivers went on strike and it was found that their action impacted on the welfare of the community because people couldn't catch buses. That is how low the threshold is now for this kind of provision.

You could have a situation where people are just taking legitimate industrial action that in most other countries would be protected in their law and that is protected in international law just because they're after a pay rise or because they're wanting to improve a condition at work. That is now, under this, potential grounds not just for making sure that someone, an official, can't be there anymore but for deregistering the union.

These are massive, broad powers being given not just to the Fair Work Commission but to the minister and interested parties to be able to bring cases to jump over a very low bar that has massive consequences, and that is why there is a great deal of concern about this legislation. The government dresses it up by using Orwellian language about ensuring integrity. They ignore underpayments, they ignore wage theft when it happens elsewhere and they ignore a lack of integrity amongst their own ministers; they ignore all of that. They're interested in only one particular side of the political fence and they're interested only in coming after workers. They're not going to touch employers or politicians who do all of those things, so they leave all of that alone.

But when you delve into the detail of this bill, behind this name, which sounds like it might be alright 'ensuring integrity', if you know a little about this area of the law, this bill will mean that people who are doing nothing more than going about their job will now be at risk of having cases brought against them. Whole unions could face deregistration for actions that in most other countries would be legal and that should be legal under Australian law except that this government has made them illegal. For that reason this bill cannot be supported.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members opposite have occasionally accused those of us on this side of the House, and sometimes me, as being anti union. I doubt many would blame us if we were. I was in the building industry for 30 years. In a past life I was a carpenter and joiner, a builder and a building construction barrister. I've seen the best and the worst of what goes on in the building industry, but the truth is that we are not against unions. What we are against is unions that break the law—nothing more, nothing less. What we're saying, with the bills before the House this week and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 today is that we will no longer tolerate a situation which says that it's okay to have one rule for some and a different rule for everybody else. That's what members want. It is what the unions want: one rule for them and a different rule for everybody else. We have seen this time and time again.

When two corporations want to merge, members opposite are the first to scrutinise the merger and ask whether it is in the public interest that these companies be allowed to act as their shareholders direct. When two unions want to merge, even if one of those unions is arguably the most lawless this country has ever seen, members opposite reject scrutiny and insist the union must be allowed to do whatever it chooses. When a corporation or an individual business leader breaks the law, members opposite are the first to call for severe and harsh penalties. They are the first to condemn any political party that may have taken donations from that corporation or that individual. Yet when the CFMMEU topped a record-breaking $16 million in fines for contraventions of the law, when they accumulated more than 2,000 separate incidents of law-breaking all over Australia, what did those opposite say? What did they do? All we hear from members opposite is excuses while they continue to bank the CFMMEU's seven-figure cheques.

In my state of Queensland we have seen a particularly sinister example of this special treatment. Under the Palaszczuk state Labor government, any individual or corporation with the remotest connection to a developer is banned by law from expressing their political beliefs by making a donation to a political party, no matter how modest. If a union, whether in the construction industry or otherwise, whether a constant and recidivist lawbreaker or not, wants to take its members' money and hand over millions to the Labor Party, that's absolutely fine. Not a problem! Nothing to see here. Is it any wonder that, after years of this special treatment from Labor governments, the unions no longer believe that even the law of the land applies to them. We've all heard, of course, the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus, say as much on national television. Ms McManus believes that if a union doesn't like a law they should be entitled to break it. Did members opposite condemn this outrageous suggestion? Of course they didn't. For members opposite and their friends in the CFMMEU and the ACTU it's one rule for the unions and one rule for every other person and entity in this country. Enough is enough. For too long some unions in this country have considered themselves above the law. For too long they have been encouraged and enabled in that belief by Labor parties at a state and federal level, who have been owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the CFMMEU.

This legislation, in combination with the raft of other measures that the coalition has introduced in this area, will help to end that perception and curb the illegal behaviour in workplaces all over Australia that is threatening the very integrity of our rule of law. Firstly, the bill permits the Federal Court to cancel the registration of an organisation on a wider and more streamlined set of grounds. Despite one infamous union accruing more than $4 million in fines in just the last financial year, the existing deregistration provisions in the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act have never been utilised. Under the new bill, it will be easier for the Federal Court to make such a cancellation on the grounds of unlawful conduct, serious criminal offences, repeated breaches of industrial laws or illegal industrial action.

We all know how necessary this amendment is and why. The CFMMEU remind us, it seems, almost every week. With more than 2,000 separate incidents of law-breaking to choose from, it is difficult to select just a few examples of the CFMMEU's illegality. But one in particular stands out in illustrating exactly the kind of entrenched belief in their immunity to the law that this bill will help to stamp out. At the Barangaroo site in Sydney, union delegate Peter Genovese was suspended from his job for throwing a punch at a site manager and threatening to kill him. Anywhere but at the CFMMEU would these actions have resulted in that delegate's immediate termination. But the CFMMEU did not condemn Mr Genovese or launch an internal investigation into his conduct. They doubled down on it in the most dramatic fashion. Then New South Wales secretary Brian Parker and his senior colleagues responded by leading 1,000 workers in illegal industrial action, which shut down the site. They shouted abuse at innocent workers who tried to do their work, calling them scum, dogs and far worse.

A policewoman at the site told the Federal Court that Mr Parker had, 'made sure that I was feeling either intimidated or scared'. She wasn't the only one. Union organiser Luke Collier described a government inspector at the site as, 'lower than a paedophile', and he proceeded to provide a crowd of workers with the inspector's mobile telephone number. I pose this question to those opposite: how can the Labor Party, which prides itself on standing against domestic violence and, particularly, violence against women and children, support a trade union regime that donates it millions of dollars yet which not only condones physical violence and intimidation against people on building sites but actually carries it out? Or they threaten to carry it out. How can that be?

Where is the consistency of the Labor Party on this issue? Those opposite and their party machinery continue to take offending union money—millions and millions of dollars in donations—when the same union thugs are committing acts of violence in the workplace. Do those opposite suggest that unless you're a card-carrying union member that you do not have a right to enjoy a safe workplace, free of the threat of physical injury by virtue of such basic things as scaffolding, but then in the next breath suggest that those who do not toe the union line should die and that their children should be raped? What about the mental health of those people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened every single day on building sites around this country? What about that of their families? Where is Labor's sanctimonious chest beating about workplace health and safety for those people who dare not to toe the union line?

When the dust had settled and the CFMMEU had received a record single fine of $1.7 million, was the union's current leadership contrite? Are they any more fit to lead a registered organisation than their colleagues? I think we all know the answer to that now. Dave Noonan, the national secretary of the CFMMEU's construction division said that the laws are rotten and they need to be changed. In Queensland, disgraced former state CFMMEU president Dave Hanna demonstrated the union's attitude perfectly, when he illegally entered a worksite in Fortitude Valley. Having given the finger to one site manager and threatened to bury the mobile phone of another down his throat, Mr Hannah stated, 'I can do what I like'. As Justice John Logan said in his judgement in that case the CFMMEU, 'cannot expect to remain registered in its existing form'. How right Justice Logan is.

This bill would not only provide the court with greater discretion to deregister the CFMMEU and others, if it sees fit, but also to make alternative orders for remedial action or to appoint an administrator where it believes these actions are necessary. These powers bring the law as it applies to unions much closer to the law as it applies to corporations in this country. No longer will it be one rule for unions and another for everyone else. I hope what we do today will force the CFMMEU to change their ways. If they do not, personally, I hope that the court will see fit to use its new powers to stand up for workers and to deregister this rogue organisation.

Secondly, the bill makes it easier to disqualify people who are unfit to hold office in a registered organisation. If you are a criminal convicted of a serious offence you cannot be a company director. This bill ensures that union officials must abide by the same rules by introducing an automatic disqualification for those who have been convicted of serious criminal offences punishable by five years or more imprisonment.

However, during the Heydon royal commission and in many court cases since, we have heard countless examples of union officials who don't commit serious criminal offences but breach their duties, abuse their privileges, act in contempt of court and engage in repeated acts of blackmail, extortion and coercion. We cannot permit that behaviour to continue. This bill would help to control unlawful, thuggish behaviour by allowing the Federal Court to disqualify officials from holding office where they have contravened industrial laws, repeatedly failed to take reasonable steps to stop their organisation from breaking the law or where they are otherwise not a fit and proper person to hold office in a registered organisation.

All in all, I imagine there are a great many CFMMEU officials around Australia following the progress of this legislation closely and reflecting very carefully on what they have done. They know that, after we pass this bill, no longer will it be one rule for unions and another for everyone else. They know that they are going to have to clean up their acts or face real consequences for their actions. They know that today there is a federal government in this place which stands up for workers and which, on their behalf, will not tolerate these lawless bands of thugs any longer.

As I said at the start of this speech, I have been involved in the building industry for 30 years. I saw the worst of union thuggery on building sites when I was a young apprentice. It's time for those opposite to take heed of the warnings and to stop the thuggish behaviour that occurs on building sites whilst they take millions and millions of dollars from organisations like the CFMMEU. We have no quarrel with unions. I have no quarrel with unions. I was a union member myself. I had to belong. I had to join the CFMMEU—as I'm sure my friend did as well—because I needed to get a job. In those days, if you wanted a job in the building industry, you had to join a union. We have no quarrel with unions—only those unions who continue to break the law.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One could be forgiven for thinking that we are living in some sort of time travel, because the bill before the House, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019, has been debated here before. The 45th Parliament rejected it on the grounds that it had no place in Australian law, and saw the bill exactly for what it was—an attack on the trade union movement by a government who are obsessed, as we have just heard, and who will stop at nothing in their senseless pursuit to rid Australians of the opportunity to become members of unions and to have their voices heard.

We have seen this bill introduced before, and it was rejected because it was excessive and it was dangerous. It was dangerous because it aimed to strike at every Australian's right to belong to a union and to be represented by a union. I always have to say: the same people who bang on about freedom of voice, freedom of speech and freedom of association don't want people to be members of trade unions. This bill, whilst slightly amended by the government from the 2017 version that we originally saw in the 45th Parliament, remains a blatant political attack on unions. It is designed to crush the power of working people in this country and, as we know, as those opposite never ever discuss, continue the wage suppression and stagnation that this government seems to be completely proud of. Without Australia's great history of the trade union movement, that is exactly what we would have seen.

For decades, unions have provided a voice for working Australians and have led the way in fighting for introducing initiatives that we simply take for granted today. They are things like maternity leave, penalty rates—before this government got their hands on them—and safety protections for workers in high-risk situations in industries, and standing up to ensure Australians are paid what is rightly theirs. We're not hearing anything tonight about wage theft. We're not hearing anything about penalty rates being cut. We're not hearing anything tonight about wages flatlining—they're all the things you would think a modern Liberal government would want to be talking about—but we know why. It's because they have an appalling record on industrial relations.

This bill goes even further than what was originally applied and impinges on every Australian's right for freedom of association and will only lead to a greater suppression of workers' rights and, more than that, basic human rights. You don't need to listen to me or anyone on this side. It's stated in the explanatory memorandum of the bill itself. Under the section titled 'Human rights implication' it goes so far as to say how this bill will impact different sections of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the right to freedom of association, the right to form and join trade unions, and the right of trade unions to function freely.

The International Centre for Trade Union Rights has described this bill as harmful to workers, undemocratic and inconsistent with international law. When it needs to explain itself on such serious matters, the explanatory memorandum goes further to discuss the implications this bill will have on the right to take part in public affairs and elections, the right to the presumption of innocence, the right to privacy and the right not to be subject to unlawful attacks on a person's reputation. This is an extraordinary attack by this government on unions and workers, perhaps like we've never seen before.

The fact that this legislation in its analysis, the explanatory memorandum, has to address these very significant human rights is just an indicator of how potentially dangerous this piece of legislation is. We know the government is following a long line of conservative governments who are absolutely obsessed about crushing the unions in this country and will stop at nothing to see unions' and workers' rights eroded. We know that. We know on this side of the chamber the disdain they have for working people in this country. We see it in the way they treat workers. We see it in the way they deride people. Who could ever forget the former Prime Minister of this country saying that aged care workers needed to get a better job, time and time again?

A research paper released by the International Centre for Trade Union Rights says, 'There is no other precedent for the degree of punitive government interference in union activity in comparable democracies,' and that the proposed ensuring integrity bill is 'incompatible with Australia's commitments under the ILO's Freedom of Association and Protection of the Rights to Organise Convention, and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention.' This is a bill that appears to be on the cusp of breaking international law. There are, no doubt, some very serious flaws in this bill, so much so that it's already been referred to a Senate committee, for further investigation, which is due to report in October this year.

This bill goes as far as to place a two-tier playing field for registered organisations and the corporate world. Currently, the Corporations Act empowers the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, not a minister, to disqualify company directors. However, under this bill, the Registered Organisations Commissioner, the minister and any person with a 'sufficient interest' would have the power to apply to the Federal Court for the disqualification of a union official.

So my question to the government, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, is: why the double standards? If we have laws that are sufficient laws for company directors and people in the private sector, we should have some equity in the terms of what is being applied to this sector. Because of this government's utter obsession with destroying the union sector, they tell us that there is a different standard. In addition to that, the penalty in this bill for an offence of a disqualified person holding their office through a union, as such, is double that of equivalent provision in a corporation act. In terms of the public interest test for union mergers, that's not even equivalent to the competition test for company mergers.

The government will tell you that you should support this legislation, because they want to have union officials apply the same standards that are there for company directors. But the legislation being put forward doesn't even do that. There are a series of examples where the benchmark they are setting for union officials is way beyond what they would ever dare apply to a company director, and that's before you even get to the rules of amalgamations.

The rules on amalgamations that they're putting forward are simply gobsmacking. Here you have a process where two unions, two voluntary associations, have a ballot of their members on whether they want to join together as one organisation. The ballot is conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission. Even if a majority in both unions voted yes to the amalgamation, there is a pathway there for a national interest test to apply as to whether or not they are objectively allowed to form a single organisation. This bill goes even further than that. Employer groups would be able to apply for unions to be deregistered. Let's just walk through that for a sec. Unions democratically having the freedom to amalgamate, going through the Electoral Commission in this country, could have that ballot overturned.

Some of these examples of what would make unions liable for deregistration are extraordinary. For example, if a group of nurses in the nurses union wanted to campaign on better staff ratios and their campaign was not registered lawful industrial action—they were simply concerned about the issues of the patients and they had unprotected industrial action—the entire nurses union could be deregistered for an action like that. That action could be brought by anyone deemed to have a sufficient interest. I just heard the government say that that's their intent. That's their direct intent. Why would the government introduce a bill like this? I've got my suspicions. I suspect they're doing this because at every level they are pathologically driven by their hatred of unions and they want to make it more difficult to organise.

If we look at the key challenges in Australia at the moment, which were referred to in the second reading amendment which the shadow minister moved—wage theft, flatlining wages growth and deaths in unsafe workplaces—for the response to be, 'Well, we need to give the workers' organisations less power,' is unbelievable in its transparency and doesn't reflect well on the government. This government isn't interested, as we know, in standing up for workers' rights, but I will tell you what it is interested in: cutting and suppressing wages. You only need to look at today's wage growth figures, which show workers' share of income is at a 50-year low.

What's worse, as another sign of this government's attacks on unions and workers, is that we know that this is the direct result they are seeking to achieve. Ultra-low wage growth isn't accidental. As we know, it's the intended outcome of government policies. That's what Senator Cormann said when he was interviewed just a few short months ago. He said that it was a deliberate design feature of the government's economic architecture. That's right: low wage growth and suppression is what this government is actually trying to achieve. Who can forget that wonderful interview by Senator Linda Reynolds, who said that that wasn't the intent but, when it was pointed out that that was Minister Cormann's intent, said, 'Oh, well, I actually agree with him now,' live on television? You couldn't make this stuff up. That's right: low wage growth and suppression is what this government is actually trying to achieve. No wonder the national economy is struggling.

In fact, as the Treasurer and now Prime Minister, the Prime Minister has presided over the lowest wages growth since records began. Let's just put that in context: the lowest wages growth in our history, not to mention, as the shadow minister indicated in his second reading amendment, the issue of cutting penalty rates, the largest pay cut since the Great Depression. I heard the Treasurer say today, 'Well, that's not our plan; that's not what we want to do.' Is he in some alternative universe? Is he not walking around the streets, listening to people who understand that when you cut penalty rates you give people a pay cut?

That is not to mention all of the mystical jobs that were going to be created by cutting penalty rates—a big fat zero. If I am wrong, and if the government have some advice or information to say that by cutting penalty rates we see a dramatic increase in employment in this country, the statistics don't bear that out. I know that from speaking to my own local businesses in the community. I know that from speaking to some of the cleaners, some of the pharmacists and some of the retail workers who had a cut of $51 for one shift on a Sunday. Now, 200 bucks for those opposite mightn't be a lot of money, but tell that to a retail worker who is trying to put food on the table, who's trying to make ends meet with spiralling electricity prices—the highest that our country has ever seen under this government watch—and rising costs in living. And this government thinks it's okay to give some of the lowest-paid workers, or the sum of 12,500 people in my electorate alone, a pay cut because their penalty rates have been cut. How is that good for the economy? How is that actually growing employment? I tell you what: it's not; it's absolutely not. So the response by this government is not to deal with wage theft or cutting wages; it's actually to begin this assault on people organising in their workplace.

We know around 700,000 low-paid workers across the country have faced that axe in their take-home pay and some workers will be up to $26,000 worse off by the times these cuts are fully implemented by 1 July next year. So, all up, under this government's watch, workers will lose an estimated $2.9 billion. So, we know on this side of the chamber that penalty rates are not a luxury. They help people. They make ends meet. We know that the costs are rising for things like child care and education under this government, but the government told us these cuts would supposedly create jobs. But two years on with cuts to public holiday penalty rates fully implemented and Sundays still being cut back, how many jobs have been created? Research shows none—zero; absolutely none—as a result of their obsession with cutting wages, supressing wages and now, in this bill tonight, they are denying workers having a real say in their future in their workplaces. Well, I say that's a sham by this government and now they want to go even further on the attack.

Some have suggested this bill has been put forward as a bit of a distraction because we are seeing problems in the national economy. But we know that, with debt doubling under this government, the national economy has gone from the eighth fastest growing economy to the 20th since 2013. Productivity has fallen for four consecutive quarters. Household spending is weak and living standards are growing slower under the Liberals than the previous Labor government. We know that we are only a few short months into this government. They are failing the national economy. They are failing people on low incomes, and tonight they are failing workers.

The truth is that this bill could leave workers without the representatives that protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces, and it's something that neither I nor my colleagues on this side of the House support. We will continue to defend the rights of workers to organise. We will continue to defend the rights of workers to ensure that they get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, can I say to those opposite: there is no intention to stop people from organising. That is just completely false, absolutely false. I want to congratulate the member for Fisher for his contribution because, unlike most of those opposite, he's actually someone who came through on the tools—a chippy who put himself through a law degree afterwards and then practised law. I'm a bit like him—I'm an electrician by trade. I came through heavy industry, working in union-organised workplaces for many years. Like the member for Fisher, I've had more than 30 years involvement in one form or another working in heavy construction, heavy industry and heavily unionised and organised workforces. So, when we speak on this bill, we actually speak from experience. Unlike those on the opposite side—and I can't say that I know the new members well, but I certainly know the only tradesperson I can think of is the member for Hunter who I believe was an auto-electrician before he came into this place through the standard union path and other organisations. I congratulate the rising star, the member for Hunter. After 20 years, he's certainly on the front foot.

We are here talking about this bill now because of a very, very long history of the CFMMEU and other union organisations acting in the wrong way, inappropriately, towards their members' money and their members' benefits. In terms of that history—and I know this might be a surprise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta—I've actually been asked on a couple of occasions why I don't sit with the Labor Party. Having been through public schools, having completed an apprenticeship in heavy industry and having worked in the sugar industry and others, why am I not on that side? The answer is quite simple. It's history and what I've learnt over many years of being involved in those organisations and, in particular, their unions.

I will never forget when just 48 hours after I completed my apprenticeship the people who I'd worked with for four years demanded I join the ETU otherwise I'd be black-banned. It was quite astounding. I will never forget my father being black banned by the FEDFA and the AWU because his workers were not AWU members and the risk that that posed to our family, their business and paying our bills. Those are the reasons we have come to this point.

Quite simply: both the Labor Party and the unions no longer represent working people. They simply do not. Let's look at their actions in construction and what they have done to the construction industry. They continue to put up the price. That is no good for consumers. We on this side actually stand for something. We stand for the people who are paying those construction bills. We stand with them. They shouldn't have to pay over the numbers—they shouldn't have to pay over the odds—simply because it is an organised workforce that black bans anyone who doesn't contribute.

These are the facts of the modern construction industry. I and the member for Fisher have been involved with them for a very long period of time. We've seen some of the best of the unions. The unions in my view are a necessary evil. They have done some good things over the years—they truly have—but currently their operation is quite simple: they take the money from their members and give it to the Labor Party. That is the process. I think that is just wrong.

That is the reason we have come to this point and are debating the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019—because they simply cannot manage the members' funds and they do not act in their interests. This is a matter of public record. If we are talking about the members' money and if we are talking about looking after the interests of union members, I say to the Labor Party, 'Perhaps you should look at where your money comes from.' I publicly congratulate the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, for going on the record and saying that John Setka should go. The man is a convicted thug and a criminal. He should not be in charge of anything to do with the money of his members and your members. You are all members of organisations—all of you. I have no issue with that at all, neither does the government. We do not have a problem with people who want to have organised labour. As I've said, the unions have done good things over a long period of time, but that time has come to an end, particularly in the construction industry.

It's good to see the member for Petrie in the chair. I know the member for Petrie has a local small business—an air conditioning business—that basically went bankrupt because it was black-listed by the CFMMEU in his electorate. It put all of the people employed by him out of business. These are the operations of the modern union movement in the construction sector—comply or go broke. And it is not just them. If you look at the report from the royal commission, you will see it is also big business. There are big businesses named in the royal commission report for doing the wrong thing. This bill affects them as well. You must continue to act in the interests of your members.

There is an opportunity here for the Labor Party. Once again I congratulate the opposition leader for standing up to someone like Setka, an absolute thug and convicted criminal, who is doing the wrong thing. We firmly believe in enforcing the law and holding those law-breakers to account. It is the reason we have reintroduced this bill. It is not because of the proposition put forward by those opposite—it is not because we want to destroy unions. We think that they, like every other organisation in this country, should abide by the law. They should be run by people with integrity who are not criminals. I don't think there is any problem with that whatsoever. This bill will ensure those registered organisations work in their members' best interests and within the bounds of the law. It is specifically designed to target organisations and individuals who fail to take the privileges and responsibilities arising out of registration or appointment as an officer seriously.

We have all seen the reports from the royal commission. We have all seen the media reports about thuggery, assault and threats. I don't see how anyone on the opposite side can defend those types of individuals. There are some very good people in the union movement. I know a number of them. I wouldn't be so brave as to name them here, because I consider them my friends. Let's say that a former president of Young Labor in Queensland is a strong union man. He is strong for the Labor Party. He is there for the right reasons. It is people like that who you need to promote. Those are the sorts of people you need to promote. You should disassociate yourselves from the bikie gangs, the thugs and the standover merchants. Like the member for Fisher, we have seen this in the construction industry over many years. It ebbs and flows and it moves and changes. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that that type of activity stops.

The bill applies equally to unions and employer organisations, and only to the conduct occurring after the commencement of the bill; it is not retrospective. The bill will give the court more appropriate powers to disqualify officials of registered organisations that have breached their duties to act in the interests of members or who have a history of breaking the law or are otherwise not a fit and proper person to hold office in a registered organisation. I ask you, what is wrong with that? What is wrong with requiring a fit and proper person to be in charge of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars of their members' money over a period of time? I think that is entirely appropriate.

The bill will allow the registration of an organisation to be cancelled or have rights and privileges removed from specific parts of an organisation where it or its officials have acted in their own interests rather than in the interests of their members, have not complied with court orders or injunctions, have committed serious offences or have a record of law breaking, none of which is possible under existing law. And I say again to those opposite: what is wrong with that? I think it is entirely appropriate.

The bill also gives the court more flexibility to act to reconstitute dysfunctional organisations and introduces a public interest test for mergers of registered organisations. We have made some amendments, and I won't go through all of those, but I think it is important to continue to note that this is a bill about integrity. This is a test for those opposite to stand up for their individual members who pay their money every single year as union members. In my view, if they do not, you will continue to find that those rusted-on dedicated union members walk away from those opposite in droves, just as they did at the last election.

This is an opportunity for those opposite to do the right thing, as is the government. We all act to ensure the integrity of those who are running unions in their organisations and looking after their members' money, and I commend the bill to the House.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Cities and Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 and to oppose it, alongside all my Labor colleagues. And can I say how pleased I was to be in the chamber for the contribution of the member for Oxley, which really nailed what's at stake with this bill, unlike the contribution of the member for Hinkler, which just demonstrated what is the central proposition in this debate, and that is that the Morrison government is utterly obsessed with unions and utterly obsessed with destroying unions in Australia. We see that in this debate, because all we see is the same litany of talking points repeated, most of which have absolutely nothing to do with the provisions of the bill before us. The examples they trot out again and again have the flavour of too many question time contributions. What they reveal is the attitude of this government and its members to working people and their organisations—nothing to do with the provisions they are putting before the House.

That was really summed up towards the end of the contribution by the member for Hinkler, when he described this bill as being another test for Labor. All this government—this opposition in exile—can do is throw up tests for Labor, because they have no positive vision for Australians and certainly no positive vision for the Australian economy or the workplaces that should drive that economy. The obsession that government members have with unions and with destroying unionism blinds them to the real issues in Australian workplaces, and we know all about them on this side—flatlining wages, the exploitation of too many workers and the rise of insecure forms of work. All this is adding up to a drift towards a labour market that simply isn't working for anyone who has to work for a living.

Simply put, too many people in Australia today have too little power at work. That's why unionism really matters now perhaps more than ever. What is so disappointing in this context is that this government doesn't even deign to show respect for the fact that working people, due to the nature of power imbalances in workplaces, join together to bargain with their employers as well as to advance other mutual interests. This dislike, this disdain, is so raw that it blinds them. And I should say that I am a very proud union member, and I want to put on the record that I'm also a firm believer in democratic and accountable trade unions. But one thing this bill is not is a driver towards that. In fact, I believe, if passed—and I fervently hope it will not be passed; it certainly should not be passed—it would undermine that aspiration, despite what government members allege.

And so, back to the context. At a time when we have declining real wages and declining living standards, which has been recognised by the Reserve Bank of Australia and, indeed, by the broad business community as a handbrake on economic growth in Australia, we have a Liberal government that is determined, it would seem, including through this bill, to drive down those wages and conditions further. Is it any wonder that this is the same mob that came up with WorkChoices? And now this reanimated bill from the last parliament. It again demonstrates not only that the government have no ideas for Australia or Australian workplaces but also that they fail to recognise that there are real issues at play that should be explored. That is why I'm so pleased that the shadow minister moved his second reading amendment, which brings the debate back to the issues that this place should be talking about. Hopefully it will invite members opposite to reflect on some of these considerations, the fact that so many families—not just in electorates like mine and the member for Dobell's but in government members', too—rely on penalty rates to make ends meet and to put food on the table. Labor does, and that's why we're putting these issues squarely into this debate as we do every day in this parliament.

Instead, we have this bill, the provisions in which represent just another example of this obsessive series of attacks on the trade union movement—indeed, on its very existence, which they seem unable to accept. They claim they want to see registered organisations and their officials afforded the same level of accountability that applies to company directors, but this bill doesn't do that; it goes much, much further. Indeed, this is tacitly acknowledged.

If we compare this bill and the provisions of the 2017 bill, we see that there aren't really any substantive differences which have been caused by the amendments. Every key feature of this bill reflects, in very similar terms, key features of the bill that was before the parliament in 2017. The changes across the board are minor. When we go to some of the automatic disqualification provisions, there are minor difference that go to the court process for disqualification, but that is only a slightly narrower fit-and-proper test on any more than a cursory examination. Similarly, there are no changes to the offence related to people continuing to act as an official once disqualified. There are differences on the issues on registration, but, again, when those changes are considered as a whole it may be that they widen rather than narrow the grounds of conduct that can justify deregistration. Similarly, the last substantive element of the bill, the amalgamation provisions, which are so profoundly antidemocratic, have been changed in some respects but, again, broadly reflect those provisions previously before the parliament.

While there have been amendments, even as amended the bill goes way beyond those recommendations contained in the Heydon royal commission. The bill also clearly contravenes the International Labour Organization's convention 87, the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention. If we look clearly through the provisions of the bill, that's just for starters when we look at the human rights implications. I hope that members opposite, in considering their contribution to the bill, have had a look at the statement of compatibility with human rights, which is a pretty unconvincing document, because this is a piece of legislation which raises a range of issues: the rights to work in article 22 of the ICCPR; articles 6 and 8 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the right to take part in public affairs and elections in article 25 of the ICCPR; the right to privacy and not to be subject to unlawful attacks on a person's reputation in article 17 of the ICCPR; and, of course, the right to freedom of association and the right to take part in public affairs and elections. The ILO Committee on Freedom of Association made the following observations:

Legislative provisions which regulate in detail the internal functioning of workers' and employers' organizations pose a serious risk of interference by the public authorities. Where such provisions are deemed necessary by the public authorities, they should simply establish an overall framework in which the greatest possible autonomy is left to the organizations in their functioning and administration. Restrictions on this principle should have the sole objective of protecting the interests of members and guaranteeing the democratic functioning of organizations. Furthermore, there should be a procedure for appeal to an impartial and independent judicial body so as to avoid any risk of excessive or arbitrary interference in the free functioning of organizations.

This is not a standard that the provisions before the House meet. They are profoundly antidemocratic and very challenging, seen through this lens. I'm hopeful that the consideration of this bill by a Senate committee will further ventilate these concerns and perhaps persuade members opposite to reconsider, at the very least, some of these egregious assaults on not just rights at work but also fundamental human rights.

This legislation, in the broad, will fundamentally change the balance and the dynamic in workplace bargaining. It can prevent nurses, aged-cared workers and retail workers from being able to stand up together and secure much-needed pay rises. It is also a law which can be weaponised at the expense of workers; a law that will attack people's fundamental rights to come together and organise collectively. Of course, we already have bodies that regulate what happens where unlawful action is taken. It's already much harder in Australia to exercise your right to bargain than in many other developed countries. This is a situation that will only be exacerbated by the bill that is before the House should it be passed. Again, it is very difficult to see how this can do anything but further suppress wages—something which has been recognised by many economists as well as people in the union movement and this side of the House.

If the Morrison government were really serious about ensuring integrity, as it claims to be by bringing forward this bill again, we would of course, by now, already have a national independent anticorruption commission. All of us in this place over the last couple of weeks have reflected on the need for that, haven't we? A national anticorruption body would be able to look at wrongdoing and corruption by companies—including some of the biggest companies in Australia—by unions, by public servants and by politicians. But, of course, this government is not all that serious about ensuring integrity. Rather, it's all about fulfilling its ideological imperatives and always trying to find issues on which it can attempt to wedge Labor. The overwhelming objective of this government is to wedge this side of politics, which perhaps is the most depressing part of the government when we look at it. They are bereft of an agenda, other than to continue to talk about us many weeks after an election upon which they've formed government. They have no vision for Australia and have no concern for Australians. They are just looking to impose tests on this side of politics.

The original version of this bill was dangerous and extreme. That is why the 45th Parliament rejected this bill in that form. The government are now bringing it back, reanimating this zombie bill, solely because they have a friendlier Senate. They've dressed it up and they say that changes have been made, but these changes are largely cosmetic in nature. They've come back with this legislation because that is what the conservative side of politics does. Every time they get additional power they come after workers and unions. This is in the context of us seeing countless examples of employers ripping off workers in recent times. The papers are full of these examples across many industries but particularly those industries where the workers have particular vulnerabilities. We don't see the government going after those industries. We don't see legislation that would tackle stagnant wages or wage theft—although it is being talked about, we are yet to see anything—or worker exploitation, despite too many horrifying stories of the most awful exploitation. We don't see any recognition on the government's side that the labour share of the economy is shrinking. We don't see any recognition of that. Perhaps members opposite don't see this as a problem.

As the member for Oxley reminded me, wage growth in Australia is at a 50-year low. Something that members opposite sometimes claim as a virtue is this increasing inequality of income—that this is a design feature of institutional arrangements. When that was said by Minister Cormann, that was perhaps regarded by some as a gaffe. But, when we see this bill, it's clear that it is a design feature of the sort of workplace regulation model this government would like to see—to further deny the capacity of workers to bargain and to further suppress wages, with the flow-on consequences for society as well as individual households.

So the government may have rewritten parts of the bill to address some concerns but the bill, fundamentally, is not in a form that any fair-minded person can accept. Fundamentally, the bill mistakes unions for something analogous to for-profit corporations, and they are not; they are democratic and representative organisations. Of course—I should be clear—that's not to say that the bill provides for equal treatment between unions and companies. Despite what government members have said, it clearly does not.

Let me be clear: on this side of the House we will not support a bill that makes it harder for workers to get a pay rise. We will not support a bill that could leave workers without the representatives that protect them from wage theft, superannuation theft and dangerous workplaces. This bill, fundamentally, represents a politically motivated attack on workers' ability to organise and be represented, run their own unions and determine who leads them and also, when it comes to amalgamation provisions, how they come together with other workers to best reflect their interests. Workers should get to choose who represents them, not the Prime Minister or his lecturing Minister for Industrial Relations.

The government has claimed again that the bill has been revised to more closely align these reforms with their corporate equivalents, but this bill, as other speakers and I have attempted to demonstrate, is far more extensive and extreme in the regulation of unions than what exists for businesses. These laws would make it possible for government ministers or disgruntled employers to shut down unions and deny working people the right to choose their own representatives. It is fundamentally important in any decent and democratic society that people are free from government and employer interference so they can join unions and elect representatives who will fight for them and organise them. This is absolutely fundamental to a democratic society, whereas this bill is about silencing working people and making it harder for all workers to win pay rises, deliver decent conditions at work and be the bulwark of a decent society in which everyone gets a fair go, in work and in life.

Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It appears to me, just from listening to the last member's contribution, that those opposite were not listening during question time when the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations outlined very clearly the type of dangerous and illegal behaviour that we are trying to address with this bill. The Morrison Liberal government firmly believes in enforcing the rule of law and holding lawbreakers to account. Our reintroduction of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 demonstrates that very important commitment.

Union and employer associations have special and privileged positions in the industrial relations system and in the economy more broadly in terms of how business is conducted and how employer and employee relations unfold, and the members of those organisations place a great deal of trust in them. This bill will ensure registered organisations work in their members' best interests and within the bounds of the law. I don't think that's too much to ask. This bill is specifically designed to target organisations and individuals who fail to take the privileges and responsibilities arising out of registration or appointment as an officer seriously. This bill applies equally to unions and to employer organisations, and only to conduct occurring after the commencement of this bill.

The provisions deal with the consequences of breaking the law or mistreating members. Registered organisations that contribute positively to the industrial relations framework and abide by the law—and, thankfully, there are plenty of them—will not be impacted by this bill. To my mind, it's a pretty simple concept that if you do the right thing you won't have any problems with this bill. If you do the right thing by your members, if you do the right thing by the law, then this bill will not impact you or your organisation.

The bill will give the court more appropriate powers to disqualify officials of registered organisations that breach their duty to act in the interests of members, have a history of breaking the law or are otherwise not fit and proper to hold office in a registered organisation. It will also introduce new offences that currently don't exist in relation to registered organisations, like acting as an official when disqualified from doing so, which has been part of the corporate regime for some time now.

The bill will allow the registration of an organisation to be cancelled or to have rights or privileges removed from specific parts of an organisation where it or its officials have acted in their own interests rather than in the interests of their members; not complied with court orders and injunctions; or committed serious offences or have a record of lawbreaking, none of which is possible under the existing law. The bill also gives the court more flexibility to act to reconstitute dysfunctional organisations and introduces a public-interest test for mergers of registered organisations.

The government has made some amendments to the bill compared with its last version in 2017 to ensure it is appropriately balanced in delivering the outcomes of accountability and integrity owed to an organisation's members while ensuring greater alignment of provisions with the standards that apply to corporate directors and other officers, wherever possible.

I want to take just a few moments to explain and outline why this bill is necessary. I am indebted to the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations, who is also our Leader of the House, for giving some real-world, real-life examples during question time recently as to the sort of behaviour we are attempting to outlaw and rein in and that is currently occurring in workplaces around the nation, putting people at risk. It's making them feel unsafe and it really has to stop.

The Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations recently outlined the behaviour of the CFMMEU's John Setka. I was quite shocked when I heard about the charges that have been laid and successfully prosecuted against this individual. I'm going to repeat them because we need as many people in the community as possible to understand the exact behaviour that we are trying to deal with—that we will deal with by passing this legislation. As the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations said, 'Unfortunately, the present laws have not provided sufficient deterrents to repeated unlawful behaviour of a small number of militant unionists.'

What sort of behaviour are we talking about here? The Leader of the Opposition says that John Setka is not a fit and proper person to be a member of the Labor Party. Why does he say that? Because of John Setka's record of lawbreaking. What is that record? John Setka has, to this point, amassed around 59 court convictions for a multitude of offences, including assault police, five times; assault by kicking, five times; wilful trespass, seven times; resisting arrest, five times; theft, attempted theft by deception and intent to coerce, nine times; and coercion, 10 times. These things, finally, have now formed the basis of a conclusion by the opposition leader that militant unionist John Setka is not a fit and proper person to be a member of the Labor Party.

Interestingly, the same remarkable record of offending has not also given rise to a view by the opposition leader that it is not fit and proper for Labor to accept the $1 million that John Setka sent to Labor as the Victorian branch secretary. Likewise, it is remarkable that the criminal record doesn't now appear to be the basis for review that it was not fit and proper for Labor to accept $13 million from the CFMMEU in total. What we have here now is a situation where the character of John Setka is rejected fulsomely by Labor but his cash is still warmly accepted, as much of it that can flow as possible. Who is actually standing up for workers here? Who is actually on the side of workers?

I think these are very good questions. The Attorney-General and the Minister for Industrial Relations has provided other practical, real-life, real-world examples of the sort of behaviour that unions and, in particular, the CFMMEU, have engaged in. As the Attorney-General said to the House recently, 'Unlawful conduct adds to the costs of infrastructure borne by the Australian taxpayer. One of the very important reasons that unlawful behaviour on worksites must be stopped is that it puts the safety of workers at risk.' These are really important issues. As the Attorney-General went on to say, 'We know that the CFMMEU has racked up $16 million in court fines for unlawful behaviour for over 2,000 breaches'. What is less well-known is that many of those breaches themselves relate to violations of occupational health and safety standards. Last year, the full Federal Court found that a CFMMEU official had acted in an improper manner to a Victorian government occupational health and safety officer. The grotesque behaviour of the CFMMEU to that official was behaviour directed not at another worker or an employer, but at a safety official.

When we look at Queensland, there are proceedings that were commenced in December last year against a CFMMEU organiser for his behaviour towards a Queensland government occupational health and safety inspector. The construction site was the Cairns Performing Arts Centre. The safety inspector was in the course of inspecting exit signage. He was confronted by the CFMMEU official, who, within centimetres of the face of the safety officer, said some terrible things and used some awful language, not once but three times. As the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations has said: 'No-one should have to put up with that language in their workplace. No-one.' The Queensland Public Sector Union now has a list of 17 sites that they will not let their members—their safety inspectors—visit because they don't feel safe. This is just appalling behaviour. Nobody deserves to be treated like this. Nobody deserves to be subject to this sort of behaviour. People must feel safe in their workplaces. They mustn't feel that going to work is going to see them threatened or endangered or subject to vile abuse.

I feel that I had a tiny glimpse of what the unions are capable of during the recent election. There are several things I would like to briefly highlight today: (1), the sort of intimidation, bullying and lies that they like to spread, and (2) the waste of money this involves—and it's not their money; it's their members' money. That's what really infuriates me about so much of this behaviour by the unions. It's not just the violence and the intimidation and the thuggery, it's the waste of hardworking Australians' money—money that they have earned and that is now being wasted by people they thought were representing them and had their best interests at heart. In a sense, it's hard to know where to begin describing the union behaviour during my campaign because there were so many different unions involved: there was the CFMMEU, the ACTU, the SDA, the Australian Education Union, and the Nurses and Midwifery Federation, and combinations of all of those unions coming together under different banners.

But let's just take the Australian Education Union as a quick example. Last year in June, well before the federal election—which was held, as we know, on 18 May this year—they advertised for a union organiser to coordinate the campaign against me and the coalition government in the seat of Boothby. Pretty quickly, they got their union operatives out and about into my local public schools to start spreading lies to my local families about education funding, and to start scaring parents, grandparents and carers with their campaign. I'd like to correct the record right here and right now, once again—as I did throughout the campaign, and during the last parliament: we have not cut funding to education. It's quite the opposite. Quality schools funding to South Australia is currently $1.5 billion in 2019-20 and it will rise to $2.3 billion by 2029. This means, in real terms, that all of my 33 public schools in Boothby will see increases to funding by about 60 per cent per student for the decade to 2029. That is clearly not a cut. This funding, unlike the wild promises we hear time and time again from those opposite, is fully budgeted. The funding is budgeted. It will be delivered. Schools in my electorate will continue to be very well-funded by the federal Liberal government.

The same unionists from the Australian Education Union also put out a range of print material—flyers, corflutes—and social media content repeating their claims. They sent a unionist out in a very large van to follow me around to my street corner listening posts. I can only assume it was to try to intimidate me and to try to stop me from speaking directly with my local community and from listening to my local community. One of the things I pride myself on is that I listen to my local community and make myself as accessible as I possibly can.

The combined union presence—all of the unions I've already named—more broadly did all of these sorts of things and more. They organised regular protests outside my electorate office and somehow managed to track me down to a range of Liberal Party and community events. They put out multiple fliers and flooded social media with attacks on me. And this is just the work that they did under their official banners. I have no doubt that some of the even more aggressive and threatening behaviour that I had to endure during the election campaign was linked to the unions. Why do I think this? Because I have just provided several really disturbing examples of what, as the Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations has outlined in this House, is going on every single day around the nation.

This is why we have reintroduced this bill. It has five key schedules covering disqualification, cancellation of registration, administration of dysfunctional organisations, a public interest test for amalgamations and some minor and technical amendments. At the end of the day, this bill is about making sure that union members' money is spent properly and is directed to supporting them—because it is their hard-earned money—and about making sure that people can and do feel safe in their workplaces every single day. I commend the bill to the House, and I look forward to the bill passing the House and workers and employers around Australia feeling safer in their day-to-day work and their day-to-day business.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will come as no surprise to you that we on this side oppose this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019. To my friend the member for Boothby, who's just delivered her speech so eloquently: I think it's quite evident that unions got involved in election processes. Unions got involved in democracy—what a charge that is! In terms of the issues about the education, she maybe should have listed the Catholic Education Office as well, who had a very clear position on the policies of both parties in terms of the funding of education. But, leaving that aside, it does show that after this election—and, credit to those opposite, we were beaten; I understand that—they have so rapidly returned to type.

They talked a lot during the election campaign, as the member for Solomon will recall, about hardworking Australians as if it just flows off the tongue for them. They talked about, almost, the Howard battlers, to use the vernacular. But I'll tell you what they didn't talk about: they didn't talk about what they're going to do to address wage stagnation. They didn't talk about how they're going to address wage theft. And, as far as I can recall from articles in my local papers during the course of the election campaign, they never mentioned unsafe working conditions or unsafe working environments. These are things that just didn't seem to make it onto the political agenda.

This is about unions. It's clearly about that. And nobody on this side is in any way going to defend improper actions. That's just not the case. The other thing about trade unions—and I think you've got to appreciate this too—is that they don't exist because somewhere in the Constitution it says, 'Thou shalt have unions.' Unions exist to fill a need in society. If there were no need, they probably wouldn't exist at all. So, in other words, if the government were doing something about addressing unfair and unsafe work practices or to effect a proper determination of wages so that workers didn't have to band together, there probably wouldn't be involvement from trade unions. Trade unions started to fulfil a need. There's no doubt that we on this side of politics were spawned by the trade union movement. Our party was developed to be the political voice of working people in this country.

For those of us who have been around here for a little while will recall Work Choices. Whilst that may not be the current policy over there, Work Choices was a pretty big thing back in 2007. It was a thing, quite frankly, that repulsed the Australian people. When those on the other side had a majority in the House and the Senate, they decided to show their true colours when it came to Work Choices. They made it legal for the first time in our history for people to enter into agreements where they were paid below award rates. It wasn't those people necessarily who were directly being attacked, who revolted over that—although I am sure they had a view once they saw their wages being cut. In my electorate, it was the mums and dads and the grandparents who had a view about that—many of whom had already retired. This was about a generation coming up who were not going to have the benefit of proper wages and conditions in this country.

It should not be lost in the memories of those opposite that this is what happens when you attack those that have an impact on setting proper wages and conditions. I know those opposite are taking some advantage at the moment of the John Setka affair. The Leader of the Opposition has made his position pretty clear about Mr Setka. But this does not define the Australian trade union movement. The government spent $45 million not all that long ago on a royal commission into trade unions. Not much came out of it quite frankly. They thought they were going to get to hoist people on petards all over the place. It just didn't occur. It was $45 million to press a political point. It was an effort by the then Prime Minister to attack the Leader of the Opposition, and he was prepared to use public money to do that.

This piece of legislation is designed to do a number of things. Schedule 1 of the bill is to allow the minister, or anyone else with a sufficient interest in a matter—and that could include employers or employer groups, even a rival union leadership contender or a business lobby, amongst others—to apply to deregister an organisation, to disqualify a person from holding office, to exclude certain members or impose administrative schemes on them. You could actually put someone into administration, for instance. They also want to have a fit-and-proper-person test. Well, we don't have one of those in parliament; that might have ruled a few people out over time.

This would disqualify people from elected union positions simply by posing a test determined by unelected people in a court. One of the things that bind both sides of parliament is our belief in democratic processes. Sure, elections are robust, and I understand the member for Boothby's complaint about the democratic recourse that some organisations, including unions, might participate in, but we in this country are the beneficiaries of a solid democratic system. We want the same system to be maintained within our trade unions. We think the members of unions should be able to elect the people that they think are best suited, best able, to actually deliver them what they want. If it is better wages and conditions, so be it.

When I think about this particular address, I remember hearing a couple of years ago a speech by the member for Kennedy, Bob Katter. I know it's sometimes a little bit hard to listen to the member for Kennedy for too long; sometimes you've got to read him in the Hansard! What he was speaking about in this place—this was during the course of the Work Choices discussion, so this is going back a little while. He reminded this House that if anyone here thought that the wages and conditions that we enjoy in this country were not the product of an effective trade union movement, they were kidding themselves. That came from someone—let's face it; the member for Kennedy has a pretty conservative pedigree about him—who has voted with the government more times than he's ever thought about voting with the opposition. The member for Kennedy made a pretty significant point. Whether he had in mind what happened with the shearers or whether it translates to any other form of work in this country, he did say that we would not enjoy the working conditions that we have without the established and effective trade union movement.

There's currently a dispute taking place in New South Wales. It's a dispute being led by the Health Services Union. I know this one a little bit more intimately than others simply because my younger brother is the general secretary of that organisation. He's not threatening a strike for wages. It's arguable whether he is calling out public hospitals for their conditions. I'll tell you what he is doing: he is threatening industrial action because of the level of assaults, stabbings and abuse, and, indeed, a shooting, that has taken place in public hospitals in New South Wales. His actions are being supported not only by members of his organisation—low-paid hospital workers, cleaners and caterers, et cetera—but by nurses and doctors as well. This is a matter of protecting patients and their visitors. I wouldn't have thought 2GB was a prominent radio station that broadcast many things in the interests of the trade union movement or Labor generally. I listened to Ray Hadley's program. Ordinarily he doesn't support industrial disputation, but he did on this occasion because here is a union standing up for the interests of a community.

Now, what's the case for my brother? The industrial commission will probably order him to withdraw his industrial dispute tomorrow. Do we allow these things to keep going? The bureaucrats in New South Wales have certainly made it very clear that they're not of the mind of bending in this. I would have thought that this is a genuine dispute that should be brought to a head for the safety of the community. Can I give a shout-out to my younger brother, Gerard—all power to him and his organisation. If you can make solid change for the better in a community, I think that's a good thing. That is a union showing some leadership. That is doing what governments should be doing.

Industrial relations is an issue, I understand, of supply and demand. I understand the enterprise of labour can be depressed. But it is being artificially driven down at the moment, on the basis that we have seen a succession of laws passed by successive Liberal governments affecting the unions' ability to negotiate. We have seen the power of the Industrial Relations Commission whittled away. If you take away those dynamics in industrial relations or weaken their bargaining positions, in terms of organisations, what are you really encouraging? It really is almost begging the law of the jungle out there. When people actually rise to the occasion and take the bait, then you think, 'Oh, well, it's time to actually get tough on unions.' I would have thought that we had the wherewithal to develop and maintain good industrial relations systems that look after and benefit workers—systems which secure workers in proper organisations with officers democratically elected in elections run by the Electoral Commission and responsive to the needs of their members.

I think this legislation shows that the government is dropping the ball on that because they want to make a target out of one organisation, the CFMMEU. They want to use the position of its secretary, John Setka, and they want to drive this to be the catalyst for getting into the whole trade union movement in this country.

I did want to say a number of things, which I don't have time to now. But I note that Michele O'Neil, the President of the ACTU, has made a number of statements about this legislation. She is certainly saying that this will harm ordinary people and also that it runs against the impact of international law as to freedom of association. I know you can discount Michele O'Neil because she's the President of the ACTU. Could I just say that, having known this woman for some time, I know that she has only recently become President of the ACTU; most of her working life was devoted to looking after people in the textile and footwear industries. She was looking after women who were working in sweatshops across the land. This is a person who actually really does know what you've got to do to look after people, to make a difference in their lives. So I wouldn't discount her out of hand. I think she's a very decent woman and someone who should be listened to.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you've ever been robbed—had your house broken into; had your car window smashed—you know that it doesn't leave you feeling very good. You feel ashamed and anxious and like something is just out of your control. You feel violated. It's very similar for victims of wage theft: shame, anxiety, anger and feelings of violation. I know—I remember when my parents' house was broken into. I was staying with them at the time because they'd been kind enough to host my 29th birthday. We'd had a great party, and we woke up the next morning to find that MacBooks, iPhones and wallets had all disappeared.

Stealing something, we all know in this place, is wrong. Stealing someone's wages—something they have, in fact, worked for in your own business—is particularly wrong. The cases of companies ripping off workers through wage theft should be outraging us and should be a far higher order of priority for this government in the industrial relations legislative agenda than the bill that is currently before us.

Michael Hill is believed and estimated to have ripped off workers by some $25 million. The work practices of 7-Eleven and their franchisors are described as 'slavery-like' conditions by some of their workers. They have a system where new franchisors are trained up by existing owners on how to undermine the wage system and existing laws that govern that business. It's estimated that some 140 7-Eleven stores in Australia would be in the red if it weren't for historical underpayments. These are things I would like to see this parliament address. Instead, we're talking about this legislation. We have seen, in more recent times, the story of a celebrity chef—I wouldn't call him a businessperson; he's a celebrity chef—running a business based off the back of underpaying his workers. When so many workers are getting a raw deal, something is wrong. This is industrial-scale wage theft, and the government is, instead, going the organisations which stand up for the underpaid.

My electorate of Perth is home to many proud unions and a very proud union history. It was the home of the protests against what was known as the third-wave industrial legislation, brought in by the state Liberal government in the 1990s. Many in this place would know that that was then used as the model for what became the Work Choices legislation in 2005. Perth is the home of Solidarity Park, a monument to the struggle of working people in Western Australia who dared to stand up for fair pay and fair conditions. It's also the home, I should note, of many employer associations, including the Australian Hotels Association, who do much to train up new workers. It's also the home of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia, who I met with recently along with the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Anthony Albanese. It's important that we recognise that we should look for the things that can unite us in the debates around industrial matters rather than doing what the government is unfortunately doing, which is looking for the things that divide us.

Sadly, the electorate of Perth has also been the site of some terrible industrial accidents—industrial accidents that unions act day in, day out to prevent from occurring. There is something my colleague the member for Cowan often says, and it's a saying that has stuck with me. She's got two young adult boys now; I've got one young boy. She says, 'If my sons were on a worksite, of course I'd want the CFMEU there to look after their pay, their conditions and, most importantly, their workplace safety.' The case of Marianka Heumann is known to many. She was a 27-year-old backpacker who fell 35 metres to her death in the heart of the Perth CBD. That worksite was a worksite that the CFMEU had trouble accessing and, in the weeks after that horrible accident, again had trouble accessing just to make sure that the workers who were still there in a very horrible time were able to work safely as investigations continued.

This debate is also about the value of collective action, and this is not just a principle that applies to unions. The National Farmers' Federation believes in collective action. The Liberal Party itself, even though it might not like to admit it, is founded on the principle of collective action: people collect together, they form a political party and off they go. But the best defence of collective action is that, as Bandit says to his daughters, Bingo and Bluey, in that great ABC television show familiar to many of us, 'You do not climb Mount Mum and Dad trying to race ahead on your own or by competing with your comrades; you do it slowly and carefully by unselfish teamwork.' That principle is at the heart of unions: making sure that collectively you do something more than you can achieve on your own. They're membership-based organisations formed by working Australians and run by working Australians—ambos, cleaners and people in the textile industry, as we just heard. They are part of our Australian story. Of course, they must be democratic, but some of the regulations placed on unions require them to be far more democratic than even the political parties registered with the Australian Electoral Commission. Indeed, a union, I would be very comfortable saying in this place, is more democratic than the LNP or any of its branches.

This bill does nothing for working Australians. It does nothing to deal with wage theft. It does nothing to address stagnant wages. It does nothing to address worker exploitation. What it does do is put more regulation on the directors of the NUW than it does on the NAB. It puts more regulation on the SDA Western Australia than it does on the Liberal Party of Western Australia. It makes it harder to build a union, harder to stay in a union and therefore easier to exploit workers.

I think we all know that, if similar legislation had been suggested for businesses, it would be ridiculed. Indeed, the halls would be full of businesses pointing out just how unworkable such legislation is. We don't have laws in front of us trying to shut down multinational pizza chains, but we do have laws in front of us trying to make it harder for unions to put themselves together and join as larger unions by amalgamating.

I've proudly been a delegate of the SDA and the Community and Public Sector Union. I was with the SDA in my time working at Bicton McDonald's, which I think is in the member for Tangney's electorate. It's a great McDonald's, and I was very proud to not just make a burger or two there but also help my fellow workers in some industrial matters, often at their first job. I think it's important that people who start their working lives are able to have the benefit of a union at that first job. I might leave my comments there.

Debate interrupted.