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

My question is to the Minister for Industrial Relations. Will the minister inform the House how the Morrison government is on the side of Australian workers and is endeavouring to protect their benefit funds from the actions of militant unions? Is the minister aware of any other approaches on this important issue?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Of course, workers' benefits funds are meant to keep capital amounts safe and sound for future needs like severance payments. We have a bill before the House that would require proper transparent public recording of what goes into the funds, what comes out of the funds and what the money is distributed on.

We know from last week that Protect transferred $32 million to the Electrical Trades Union. We know that $10.4 million went to the employer organisation NECA. We say that is precisely the type of transaction that should properly be accounted for. It should be transparent. It should be knowable to workers whose money it is. Members opposite say, 'Don't worry about this'. We had the ultimate 'Don't worry' yesterday from the shadow minister, who went on radio explaining that he'd looked into it over the weekend. He's explained that $32 million transaction this way: 'Instead of distributing the earnings, interests and things like that each year, for the sorts of programs I've described, they waited a few years before they did it. So, technically, the previous years' earnings get recorded as though they were capital, but what was distributed out was simply three years of earnings. The money that is required for entitlements is still there.' So it's a technical $32 million accounting mistake. That's what it is. Are we feeling comforted?

I see a few problems with that. Problem No. 1 is: if they 'waited a few years before they distributed the earnings', you might expect that the earnings distributed out in the previous years would have been close to zero. Wrong. In 2014, it was $971,000 to the ETU. In 2015, it was $1.5 million. In 2016, it was $975,000. Then it was the whopping $32 million in 2017.

The second problem is: the ETU accounts don't just say it's capital once; they say it's capital twice. They record it as capital and then say:

The ETU has entered into a Facility Agreement with Protect to loan back the capital distributed to the ETU if Protect needs to recall the distribution to meet ongoing expenses.

That leads to the third problem. But the shadow minister says, 'Don't worry; the money that is required for entitlements is still there.' If it's still in Protect, why do you need a loan facility to loan back the money in case it's needed by the members of Protect for severance payments?

The fourth problem is: if it wasn't capital but, rather, accumulated earnings for several years, you'd probably expect that the next year would again be a low amount—just a lazy million dollars. But hot off the press are the 2018 accounts. Do you want to know how much money was sent by Protect to the ETU in 2018? Twelve million dollars. That is a whopping $45 million in two years, which leads to this ultimate question. If we suspend all disbelief and believe that this is an accounting mistake, and accept that it's actually accrued earnings, surely this question is relevant: what is the $45 million being spent on? What accounts for how that money is being spent? That's what we want to know.