Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the increasing costs in the construction industry are creating significant strains on Australian building companies;

(b) rising costs are creating serious delays and further exacerbating substantial housing shortages in many communities across the country; and

(c) these shortages are perpetuating the current rental crisis;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) union lawlessness is on the rise in the commercial construction sector following the Government's announcement to abolish the construction industry watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC); and

(b) this lawlessness is further undermining the housing industry and compounding the strains felt across the sector; and

(3) calls on the Government to:

(a) implement measures to reign in rising costs, assisting businesses, renters and Australians who are building or have bought their own home;

(b) move to curtail the underhanded and illegal actions of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining Energy Union (CFMMEU) throughout the commercial construction sector; and

(c) reinstate the ABCC in its role as the construction industry watchdog.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the construction industry to Australia's economy. It is Australia's fifth-largest sector, contributing around eight per cent of our GDP and employing 1.1 million Australians. At this time, the industry is facing immense pressure. We've got significant labour shortages, significant supply disruption, and inflationary pressures forcing up the cost of materials to levels never seen before. This, of course, has flow-on impacts across the economy and across our society, perpetuating an undersupply of dwellings that has created our ongoing rental crisis. I've come out of the construction and property sector, and I know the challenges facing the industry and how important the sector is for Australia's economic growth.

I also know, from firsthand experience, that the Australian Building and Construction Commission has played a critical role in promoting integrity, safety, and lawfulness in the construction sector. The ABCC has achieved a successful outcome in 103 of 112 cases resolved. The courts have imposed $17.9 million in penalties against all respondents and the ABCC has recovered $5.53 million in wages for 8,921 employees. Against the CFMMEU, it has been successful in 84 of 92 cases since 2016, with courts imposing penalties of $16.1 million.

At such an acute time for the industry, it beggars belief that the Labor government will seek to abolish the ABCC and, in the interim, pull the powers back to a bare legal minimum. This is a purely ideological project. This is already having a significant impact on the construction sector. We've already seen growing lawlessness across commercial construction, and we've seen 200 CFMMEU members storm the Transport and Main Roads building in Brisbane. We've seen Master Builders staff in South Australia have their cars vandalised and CFMMEU stickers placed upon them, leading to the South Australian Premier to quite rightly order the return of CFMMEU donations. In the last fortnight, we've seen the mining and manufacturing divisions of the CFMMEU seeking to break away from the lawlessness of the construction division. Just this month, the ABCC has taken multiple actions against those engaged in lawlessness, both unions and builders. I quote from their recent media release headlines: 'ABCC alleges CFMMEU targeted workers with abuse and threats at Newcastle building site'; 'ABCC starts legal actions against employer over alleged non-payment of workers'; 'CFMMEU and representatives penalised $495,000 over work stoppages at Melbourne University … project site'; and, finally, 'ABCC takes CFMMEU, CEPU to court over alleged right of entry breaches at a Brisbane CBD project site'. And that's all just in the last couple of weeks. If the new government abolishes the ABCC, who's going to protect workers in the construction industry from this thuggish behaviour? Labor will leave this crucial industry and those who work in it unprotected and put Australia's economic growth at great risk at a very acute time for both the industry and the economy.

Because we know the fundamental importance of the construction industry to Australia's economy, we know the impact that drawing back the ABCC will have across this sector. Australia is already a high-cost country for construction, whether it be for infrastructure, or commercial or residential construction. We simply can't afford another additional non-productivity on top of the pressures the industry is already battling with. Don't just take my word for it. The Australian Industry Group, one of the groups that the Prime Minister lauded for attending the recent Jobs and Skills Summit in this building, said the decision to disempower the commission is 'a backwards step for the fight against bullying and intimidation'. EY's The costs of abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission report from April this year found that the abolition of the ABCC could lead to a total loss to our economy of about $47.5 billion in GDP by 2030 and that output in the construction industry alone could fall by $35 billion by 2030. The EY modelling suggests that up to 4,000 jobs could be put at risk by this move.

I call on the government to reinstate the ABCC to its full role and powers as the construction industry watchdog, and I call on members to support this motion.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the member for Bowman's notion. Labor knows that too many Australians are struggling to pay their rent or buy a home and that too many Australians are homeless. But the Albanese government is playing its part. All levels of government need to come together to address these challenges. This is why we will develop a national housing and homelessness plan to drive action across governments and with industry. It is also why Labor's Minister for Housing has met with state and territory housing and homelessness ministers twice since the election—the first meetings in almost five years under the former government. There is a lot to do after almost 10 years of Liberal and National inaction when it comes to housing, but this government has a plan, and we're already delivering.

Labor abhors corruption and criminal activity in any industry, including the building and construction industry. But, as those opposite know, the ABCC is not designed to deal with breaches of the criminal law or with corruption of any kind. If a criminal matter happens, then due criminal processes should occur. This is just another attempt by the opposition to curate a myth that they should actually be embarrassed about. The ABCC was originally set up by the Howard government to enforce civil laws and industrial relations legislation. The Howard government originally established it to target workers for ideological reasons. It was set up to discredit and dismantle unions and undermine the pay, conditions and job security of ordinary Australians. Under the original Howard-era ABCC, they claimed that productivity in the building industry improved, which, of course, was not true.

To put some things into perspective, let's revisit the period after the ABCC was introduced in 2005. Productivity was mentioned by the member for Bowman. Building industry fatalities jumped 95 per cent between 2006 and 2008. Cases were brought against the CFMEU and other unions, resulting in over $5 million in fines and millions more in court costs, which, as you know, may be good for lawyers but is not actually good for the building industry. The ABCC was condemned eight times by the International Labour Organization for bias and for breaching conventions that Australia has signed. They were found to have unlawfully interviewed 203 people. So much for respect for the rule of law! When the Gillard and Rudd governments removed the majority of the ABCC's powers and implemented the Fair Work Australia model, we saw industrial disputes go down, we saw fatalities go down, and we saw productivity increase. I note that, during the period that the ABCC was in place, there were 330 deaths on construction sites. How many investigations were set in motion by the ABCC into those deaths?

A government member: Zero.

Not one. Correct—zero. Unfortunately, the ABCC was reinstated in late 2016 by the Turnbull government who claimed that the re-establishment of the ABCC would lead to an increase in productivity—again. Bernard Keane from Crikey asked in an article recently: 'Productivity is the fundamental purpose of the ABCC. How has it performed?' Keane's research comes from the Productivity Commission's annual productivity report. Labour productivity between 2007 and 2016 in construction has seen annual 2.1 per cent growth. Keane points out that, while some of that period covers the last years of the Howard-era ABCC, most of it covers the period of time when Labor had made changes to the ABCC and, subsequently, abolished it. So now we have a bar. How has productivity performed since the coalition exhumed the ABCC? Bernard Keane's data says that construction sector labour productivity fell by 2.4 per cent. In 2018-19, it was down by 2.6 per cent. The next year, just before the health pandemic, productivity also fell by 2.6 per cent. So, really, what the figures show is that, under the ABCC, productivity in construction went into reverse.

What has the ABCC been doing? It certainly hasn't been increasing productivity in the construction sector. Since 2016, the ABCC has hit 252 individual workers with $530,800 in fines and penalties, which is substantially more than the $513,255 they've imposed on employers. Most of these workers were fined for attending stop-work meetings or participating in industrial action that would not see workers prosecuted in any other industry. The ABCC spent more than half a million dollars in pursuing the CFMMEU in the High Court over a dispute where union organisers demanded a women's toilet on a Melbourne worksite. As Bernard Keane rightly concludes:

… the Coalition presided over worsening labour productivity in construction, but re-establishing the ABCC accelerated the decline significantly.

We went to the last election with a commitment that we would abolish the ABCC and we intend to keep our promise and do exactly that.

Deputy Speaker, I suggest that the former speaker has already spoken on this matter.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am just about to make—

Honourable members interjecting—

Order! I remind everybody in this House that I really welcome listening to your arguments and contributions when you are standing on your feet to talk. The interjections are getting pretty loud, and I'm going to rule on them if you keep it up. Member for Deakin, are you seeking the call?

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What was your point of order?

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That the member for Deakin has already spoken on this matter.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. As is customary, I—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You did not reserve your right to speak.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Excuse me! I rule that the member for Deakin can have the floor.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Deputy Speaker Claydon. It's quite extraordinary, but unsurprising from members opposite. We know you can't bite the hand that feeds you, and it's very interesting to see how defensive members opposite get when defending the CFMMEU—people who abuse women on building sites and who threaten and intimidate many people, including women, on building sites. The member should be ashamed of that contribution.

I want to congratulate the member for Bowman for bringing forward this motion tonight because members opposite don't want to talk about the litany of crimes inflicted by the CFMMEU. Indeed, their Premier in South Australia got shamed into handing back money that they had taken on the eve of an election from the CFMMEU. We hope that that will lead to further members of parliament and leaders of the Labor Party around the country feeling similar shame for taking money from an organisation that is a criminal organisation. Judge after judge in the Federal Court, or the federal circuit court, have made the point that no amount of fines imposed on the CFMMEU will change their conduct. The conduct is not just little disturbances on worksites. The conduct includes the most serious and grievous threats to individuals—people who just want to go to work and just want to work. So for those opposite to defend the CFMMEU by abolishing the ABCC is quite extraordinary. Let's be frank. As I said at the beginning, it's very difficult for a political party like Labor to bite the hand that feeds it.

I want to touch on something that's related to this motion from the member for Bowman, and that is the crisis that we're now seeing in the residential construction industry, no doubt exacerbated by the rhetoric that Labor has utilised with the ABCC. Today we saw the most recent data from the Master Builders Association, that now shows projections which sees new starts reducing each year, all the way through to 2024. Indeed, by 2024, we will see 50,000 less homes built in that year than we saw in 2021, the year when the government put in place a suite of measures to support the residential construction industry—50,000 less homes by 2024. Yet what have we heard from the Labor government or the Labor housing minister? Nothing. We've heard absolutely nothing from the housing minister of this country to support the residential construction industry and the many hundreds of thousands of people who work with, and rely on, new home sales. We've seen new home sales fall off a cliff in the last two to three months. I'd say to members of the government—indeed, I'd say to the minister—being in government, you are confronted with problems that you may not necessarily expect, but it is your job to address those problems as they arise. Now we're seeing residential construction falling off a cliff. That's going to affect the entire supply chain of people working. We might not feel it now, because of the huge pipeline of work that was left to you by the former government, but it will eventually hit. It's going to affect the bricklayers, the plumbers, the electricians, those who sell the homes and the architects. There are nearly a million people employed in the residential construction industry.

The challenge for Labor and for the housing minister is: what is your plan? You have a budget in a matter of weeks. We want to see in the budget what the plan is to support residential construction. If we don't see a plan from this minister and this government then what we will be seeing is a government that accepts that housing starts will drop to 174,000 by 2024, down from the 230,000 that were delivered in 2021. These aren't just jobs for the people who are building the homes, but they are new homes and, in many cases, first homes for Australians. We saw first home buyers rise to their highest levels for nearly 15 years under the former coalition government. We saw in one year the first home buyers go from about 100,000 to nearly 170,000 people. That is a profound difference to those people, and if we don't see a plan from the Labor Party in the budget on how they support residential construction, and how they support first home buyers—who are typically the ones who purchase those new homes—then what Labor will be saying is that the Master Builders Association's forecasts are acceptable, and I think that would be a huge problem for our country.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've been here nine years, and I've had the opportunity to speak on a lot of motions, but I have to say that the motion moved by the member for Bowman is truly ridiculous. It's probably one of the most ridiculous that I have seen. To link the ABCC to the domestic construction sector and to the housing and rental crisis that we're currently seeing is so ridiculous that I suggest to the member for Bowman: when a shadow minister hands you a motion and says, 'Will you move this?'—read it first. Read it and ask questions. Because to link the two shows your complete lack of understanding of how public policy has worked in this country.

One of the reasons we have such a rental crisis right now is because of the previous government's decade of inaction. They did not build one new public housing, social housing or community housing project. Not one. That is what has exacerbated part of the rental problem that we have right now, and the crisis that we have with affordable social housing. The previous government also introduced the HomeBuilder program at the very worst time, when people already had disposable income, weren't travelling overseas and had the money for a deposit. All they did was speed up people buying first homes—building them in the ground. That all they did. Builders said to me that what they would have sold in 12 months, they sold in three months. And now we have a supply chain lag, trying to catch up.

The other point I make to the member for Bowman and those opposite is that I doubt the ABCC has ever walked onto a domestic home construction site. They're not wandering around Bendigo or the outer suburbs of Melbourne talking to the many subcontractors that work on those sites. The ABCC has targeted the big builds. The ABCC has targeted where the CFMMEU has a concentration of their members. They are not your independent, small-business owners that you have on domestic construction sites. This motion demonstrates how completely devoid of any real policy or focus the opposition have in trying to link the ABCC to what is going on in our housing and rental affordability crisis.

Let's just talk about the ABCC and how completely hopeless it has been in prosecuting the real criminals and fixing the real problems going on in the construction sector. Wage theft is out of control. Sham contracting is out of control. Yet instead of going after those issues and those unscrupulous employers who have unsafe workplaces, who put backpackers and labourers without the proper skills in harmful places, and who are presiding over gross underpayments, they are focused on prosecuting employers and unions for having Eureka stickers on their helmets, and for insisting that a women's toilet be on a workplace.

So many have cases have gone from the ABCC to the Federal Court and have collapsed in the Federal Court because of a lack of evidence. Despite all of the ranting of those opposite, the ABCC isn't a criminal court. It isn't. We in Labor say the rule of law should apply to all workplaces, and, if you do wrong, you should be held accountable. But it should be the same rules and the same laws for every workplace. If you're a construction worker or a cleaner, if you do the wrong thing you should be held accountable. Nobody tolerates violence in workplaces, regardless of the workplace. People should be held accountable.

But the ABCC didn't have the authority to do that. They referred it to the Federal Court or to the High Court, and in almost every instance they lost. Their most recent collapse of a case was two weeks ago. The prosecution against the CFMMEU was dismissed after the case collapsed. It wasn't the only one. There were many. Labour productivity in this sector, as a result of the ABCC, is down 2.4 per cent. It was down in 2017-18. It was down in 2018-19. It was down in 2019-20. During the period in which the ABCC existed under previous government, not only did we see a complete lack of focus on who the true criminals were in the sector; we saw productivity in the sector collapse. If the opposition were serious about getting construction back on track and about solving these issues that we have, it would stop trying to link old policy debates and old arguments into this parliament.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by thanking the member for Bowman for moving this motion and getting all these on-the-record comments from members of the government—they're deeply supportive of the CFMMEU and the way in which they operate in society—which is very helpful.

The member for Lyne is going to chastise me for this because I'm slightly revealing something that happened in our party room, which we're not meant to do. But I remember, a couple of years ago, the then Attorney-General bringing a package of industrial relations reforms forward, and one of them involved changing the Fair Work Act to allow for a union to deamalgamate. We all thought the Labor Party would never support anything like this. We were told: 'No, no. Just on the quiet: the Labor Party absolutely will support this, because the mining division of the CFMMEU wants to deamalgamate from the CFMMEU.'

We changed the law, and the Labor Party supported it. The mining union was so embarrassed to be associated with the CFMMEU that they wanted to support a change to the law so that they could not have anything to do with that union going forward. Just recently, of course, we've seen the actions in the Federal Court where the mining division of the CFMMEU, in their application and attempt to not be associated with the CFMMEU, are having to make legal argument in court as to why they want deamalgamate. Their main reason is the way in which the CFMMEU continually breaks the law, and they themselves have submitted to the court an enormous number of examples of why being associated with the current iteration of the CFMMEU is something to be embarrassed and ashamed about. The mining division of the CFMMEU doesn't want to be a part of that bad behaviour, and good on them for that.

Another poor bloke that fell foul of the CFMMEU was someone by the name of Aaron Cartledge, who was the state secretary of the CFMMEU in my home state of South Australia. He wasn't big, bad and ugly enough for the CFMMEU, particularly the Victorian branch, and he was hounded out of that role. The South Australian division of the CFMMEU were made moribund, and, now, the Victorian chapter of the CFMMEU runs the CFMMEU in my home state of South Australia.

Aaron Cartledge didn't break the law enough. He didn't do the wrong thing enough. He wasn't acceptable to these people. He is a lifelong union man, a proud Labor man, someone that probably cared about things like the welfare of workers. Well, that wasn't what the CFMMEU, particularly the Victorian division of the CFMMEU, saw as being any form of high-value credential when it came to operating as the secretary of a union. So he's gone.

Now John Setka and co are running the CFMMEU not just in Victoria but also in my home state of South Australia. The Labor Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, was so embarrassed and ashamed of having anything to do with that guy that he returned the donations from that union that were given to the South Australian Labor Party for the recent state election. That's who the CFMMEU are, particularly their construction division out of Victoria, and that's what they stand for. We've got a situation now where the head of the Master Builders Association in South Australia has had to hire a security firm because he fears for his own personal safety and that of his family. Vehicles owned by senior members of the Master Builders Association were vandalised in the car park with all kinds of slogans, and there was disgusting, despicable behaviour by people on the basis that the MBA doesn't toe the line in supporting the new regime that runs the CFMMEU in South Australia.

A Labor Premier is embarrassed to be associated with them and returns an enormous amount of money, which would hurt the coffers of the Labor Party; we know how much they rely on support from the union movement. When the South Australian Premier says, 'I can't accept six-figure sums from this union; it would be an embarrassment to be associated with them,' and when a guy like Aaron Cartledge is not welcomed to continue to lead the union in South Australia, something is seriously rotten with that bikie gang that they call a union, being the CFMMEU.

Those opposite would do themselves a favour to take a leaf out of Peter Malinauskas's book. Don't have anything to do with those people. Disavow them; disown them. Do what Bob Hawke did with the old BLU. Set a standard for the behaviour—even if it's in the union movement that gives you so much money—that you will not accept. That's why I commend this motion to the House.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the motion moved by the member for Bowman. I feel that this is an opportune moment to make a contribution about an important area of policy, one that relates to one of Labor's election commitments that was made in the lead-up to the recent federal election—the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC. The abolition of the ABCC was a well-publicised policy of the Labor Party in the lead-up to this year's federal election. It should not come as a shock to anyone in this place, the media, the construction sector or even the ABCC itself that Labor intends to fulfil its election commitments in government. Far be it from me to say otherwise.

As we heard from Senator Hume on Insiders yesterday, the coalition doesn't have policies. But the ABCC, in punishing workers and their representatives, isn't a policy for those opposite; it's part of their DNA. Former prime minister Tony Abbott always made reference to returning the industrial relations pendulum back to the sensible centre. How a body that has such coercive powers to use against ordinary construction workers can ever be described as a return to the sensible centre is beyond me. Building and construction workers should be subject to the same laws and regulations as other workers. They aren't some special class of employees that require additional restrictions placed on them. They should, however, be afforded the same protections, especially when it comes to upholding safety standards on worksites—something the ABCC has been seemingly silent about. But, if a union logo were on a safety sign, you'd soon feel the weight of their office upon you.

Too often we have seen the ABCC used as a political weapon, only for the end result to be discredited in the courts and the media, again at the cost of millions of dollars by way of court costs and legal fees. The ABCC has spent, and continues to spend, millions of taxpayer dollars in prosecuting workers for wearing stickers on their hard hats, and does very little to improve any of the problems this motion pretends to say that the restoration of the ABCC will achieve.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Fisher!

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Between October 2021 and March 2022—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You missed my warning, and I will throw you out if you don't heed it.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

the ABCC spent $2.15 million on external legal fees—$2.15 million. Very few active cases of the ABCC's involve the underpayment of workers or late payments of subcontractors. Instead we see cases such as a case where $488,562 was spent pursuing a building company over the Eureka flag being displayed on a worksite; a case where $495,203 was spent taking a case to the High Court unsuccessfully, where a union demanded a women's toilet on a worksite; and another failed case, costing $298,127, prosecuting two union officials for having a cup of tea with a mate.

Those opposite, when in government, did so little to increase the supply of housing stock, especially affordable housing and public housing. They will only raise these concerns when a vestige of their ideological hubris such as the ABCC comes under threat. Labour productivity under the years of the ABCC was nothing to write home about. This is despite many of the arguments of the coalition being centred around improving productivity. The name of the legislation itself was the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill, after all.

As the member for Bendigo recently mentioned, labour productivity went down 2.4 per cent in 2017-18. It went down 2.6 per cent in 2018-19 and went down again by 2.6 per cent in 2019-20. This Labor government has already made the first steps to fulfil this election commitment, whilst also consulting with employer and building industry groups and peak bodies, unions and state and territory ministers for workplace relations. It's about time that the coalition considered the Australian Building and Construction Commission to soon be 'dead, buried and cremated'.

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

I was involved in the building industry for 30 years before I came into this place, as a builder, as a carpenter and joiner and then as a construction law barrister, and I have never heard so much tripe in my life—apart perhaps from when I was on building sites, but that's another point.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

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

I won't make that mistake. I promise you I will not make that mistake a second time.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission performs a vitally important role in our industrial relations and construction sector landscape. I've heard those members opposite talk about how the ABCC doesn't do this and it doesn't do that. Of course, the CFMMEU are as pure as the driven snow—absolutely as pure as the driven snow! There's nothing to see here! Let's have a look at the CFMMEU. The mining and energy division are so impressed with their construction colleagues that they've just brought an application to the Fair Work Commission to seek to be deamalgamated from them, such is their disgust with the way that their colleagues in the construction division handle themselves. They in fact cite in their application 145 separate infractions, breaches of the Fair Work Act, as to why they want to be cut loose from this mob. That's the second lot. There is also the manufacturing division, which prior to that also brought an application to disassociate themselves from those fine, upstanding gentlemen in the construction sector.

Those members opposite can come in here and talk the big talk about how the ABCC are terrible and they haven't done this and they haven't done that. In case after case after case, the Federal Court has held that the CFMMEU are the most recidivist industrial organisation in this country, which continues to break laws in this country. That is very hard for those members opposite to hear. Why? Because they continue to receive significant funding from the CFMMEU. I understand it's somewhere around $10 million in donations to the Labor Party over the last 10 years. I can understand why that is a source of discomfort. Premier Malinauskas from South Australia was so discomforted that he actually ordered the return of those political donations to the CFMMEU. Yet the federal Labor Party continues to take donations from an organisation that, quite frankly, has made its bread and butter in breaking the law.

I have spoken with people I know personally who are involved. In fact, I have seen it in my old days as a chippie working on building sites in Melbourne, albeit in the BLF days. It is standard de rigueur practice and process for the CFMMEU to harass, to hunt down and in fact, through practices like third-line forcing, to deny businesses that do not employ CFMMEU labour the ability to set foot onto building sites. We have laws against that. John Howard introduced laws about freedom of association. Prior to those laws coming in, every building site in Victoria had a big sign on the front gate that said, 'No ticket, no start,' meaning that if you were not a member of the BLF, which was the precursor to the CFMEU, you could not get a job on that building site. We brought an end to that, and it was a good thing too. But what we are now seeing is the CFMMEU muscling up to small businesses and large businesses alike—but particularly small businesses—and saying, 'If you don't have a CFMMEU approved EBA or if you're not employing registered union labour, not only you will not get a job on this site but we will shut you down on every other site in Queensland. That is wrong, and that is what the ABCC is designed to fix.

David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this motion. I'm happy to put on the record that I didn't receive any money from the CFMMEU, but it's good to see it went to some good purposes.

The construction industry is one of the largest-employing industries, at around 8.7 per cent of the Australian workforce. This is over 1.17 million people, and this figure is projected to grow by over 66,000 workers over the five years to November 2026. Furthermore, the Reserve Bank of Australia forecasts the sector to be worth over $424 billion in revenue in 2021-22.

With such a sizeable workforce that contributes so significantly to the Australian economy, it is extraordinary how we currently undermine building workers with laws and regulations different from those in any other industry. They are the only industry with specific unfair-workplace-relations legislation, all under the guise of improving productivity. The previous government established yet again the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the accompanying Code for the Tendering and Performance of Building Work. The very name of the act that re-established the two is the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Act. The stated aim of the act is:

… to provide an improved workplace relations framework for building work to ensure that building work is carried out fairly, efficiently and productively, without distinction between interests of building industry participants, and for the benefit of all building industry participants and for the benefit of the Australian economy as a whole.

If this is the act's aim, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Act is one of the least successful pieces of legislation in Australian history.

Incredibly, since its re-establishment in 2016, the ABCC has overseen a decline in productivity growth in construction. It has failed on the key performance indicator that it was apparently established for. But, in addition, critical issues such as poor work health and safety, noncompliance with wages and entitlements obligations, unpaid subcontractors and sham contracting continue to plague the industry. What we are seeing is a highly politicised and discredited ABCC targeting workers purely for ideological reasons. They have been more concerned with dismantling unions and harassing and punishing workers over trivial nonsense such as union logos on a helmet or a poster. It's proven that it's an unnecessary body and a waste of taxpayers' money.

The government went to the election with the promise to end the unfair treatment of building and construction workers, and we intend to achieve that. We understand that the best way to increase productivity in the industry is better cooperation between employers and employees—a relationship built on mutual trust and respect rather than conflict. Importantly, building workers should be subject to the same laws and regulations as all other workers. We have the Fair Work Act and the Fair Work Ombudsman to enforce it across all industries, and the construction industry should be no exception. There won't be a shortfall in workplace relations regulation within the industry.

Over the last couple of months, we've been fortunate to listen to some wonderful first speeches from across the chamber. However, there seems to be another rite of passage for some in our parliament: if they really want to be properly initiated, they need to have spoken about the CFMMEU, whether or not their day-to-day lives outside this place have anything to do with workplace relations or the construction industry.

This contrasts with the approach taken by the government at the recent Jobs and Skills Summit and by the industry itself. In recent months, in both national and regional forums, employers and unions have come together with government to address common challenges. The grown-ups in the room want to engage in constructive and cooperative politics. The time for the politics of polarisation is over.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30