Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It us 2024, the year of the summer Olympics in Paris, and I must say the Albanese Labor government are doing a great job of honouring the Olympics this week. It has been the week of backflips. They would be looking good on the floor at the gymnastics. We've seen the backflip on vaping—they changed their position on that yesterday, and we've now seen the backflip on union demerger rules. We see these backflips because this is a government that was on the wrong path from the start of their term and have now lost their way.

This is a very significant backflip by this government and it leaves a lot of questions that need to be answered. It's also a confusing backflip because it directly contradicts the wish and the will of the CFMEU. Zac Smith, the National Secretary of the CFMEU said:

The bill restores now-repealed Coalition-era powers to undermine unions and singles out the CFMEU to allow a ballot after the manufacturing division's multiple failed legal attempts to do so.

He then said the bill sets 'a dangerous precedent'.

Why have they changed? Is it politics? Is it optics? Have they suddenly found a moral backbone after years of lawlessness from the CFMEU to stand up to them? I don't think that's the case. I think we have a situation of politics at play here and it's a very interesting test for those opposite. Their union, the CFMEU, is directly against this decision. So there's now a question for those opposite. Do they cross the floor and vote against this bill? Do they cross the floor and support one of their unions or do they follow the leadership of the Prime Minister and the minister?

We learnt yesterday that the rules of the ALP no longer apply. Those opposite now have the ability to cross the floor and defy the Prime Minister, with no consequence. We know that; we saw it. No longer can those opposite hide behind collectiveness, hide behind the party rules of the ALP. They have to make a decision, particularly those that are members of the CFMEU. Are they going to support their union or are they going to support their leadership? That is the question that we will see from those opposite, as they can now defy their Prime Minister without consequence.

I'm a cynic when it comes to these things, because in 2020 the coalition brought this legislation forward. They introduced legislation to give unions the opportunity to demerge if it was no longer serving the best interests of the members to be part of that union. In 2021, during the Special Platform Conference, the Australian Labor Party outlined as part of their further industrial relations policies: 'Union demerger reform—reversing the Morrison government's legislative changes that make it easier for unions to demerge.' In 2020, the coalition brought the legislation in. In 2021, there was the ALP policy to reverse the change. ALP came to government in 2022, and the law was changed.

In February of this year, Senator Lambie put a bill to the Senate to reinstate the demerger laws, and she spoke about the challenges, in particular, for the textile workers and the clothing and footwear sector in being part of the CFMEU. I'll get to some of those challenges in a moment. But those opposite voted against that. They wouldn't allow that legislation to change. That's despite John Setka, one of the leading figures in the CFMEU, having a well-documented history of domestic violence and abuse towards women. They were happy in February this year to support John Setka and the CFMEU. They were happy at the last election to take $4.3 million in donations from John Setka and the CFMEU, despite his well-known history of domestic violence and abuse towards women. They were happy to do that then.

But suddenly now, in June 2024, they're going to defy John Setka and defy Zach Smith, the National Secretary of the CFMEU, and they're going to backflip. Why? It's because of the thuggish behaviour of John Setka to target Stephen McBurney because he had the audacity to take a job. He had the audacity to fulfil a role, and the unions want to harass him and punish his new employer, the AFL. Suddenly the unions aren't worried about due or fair process. They're now happy for someone to lose their job at an organisation because of something they did at another job. That is the hypocrisy of the union movement and the CFMEU.

The reason I'm cynical is: how can you support a person that has a track record of domestic violence but suddenly backflip? Is it the politics of it? I'm a Melburnian, and we love our AFL. It's part of who we are and what we do. There was front page after front page about the thuggish behaviour of John Setka. In all of those articles also was a refusal by the Prime Minister; the Premier of Victoria, Jacinta Allan; and any minister opposite to condemn John Setka and his attack on the AFL and an innocent person. They wouldn't condemn him; they didn't have the courage to condemn him. This week the Prime Minister did not have the courage to stand up to John Setka.

But the headlines continued, and the pressure continued. Two weeks later, we see this bill in this House to show that they are doing something, and this is where the cynic comes in. The real question is: What's going to happen in the future? Are they going to quietly, in six months time, change the legislation and drag out the process for the textile workers so nothing can change? Will they wait until the heat dies down, bring it back in, ram it through with their numbers and do a sweetheart deal with a few on the crossbench to get it through? Well, let's see.

As I said, they are a government that weren't prepared to stand up to John Setka, despite his record of domestic violence and abuse towards women. But, apparently, they will now stand up to him because of a few headlines in the Herald Sun. That's why I have no faith that this bill, when passed, will actually last any significant amount of time. The fact that those members opposite who are also members of the CFMEU are prepared to defy their national secretary and not cross the floor, despite having no consequences, tells you that the fix is in. We will continue to watch with interest.

Let's understand why the coalition in 2020 brought this change in, why Senator Lambie introduced her private senator's bill in February this year. We know those opposite repealed the change because of $4.3 million from the CFMEU. The textile, clothing and footwear sector is part of the CFMEU, and it has the greatest number of women in it. After the merger, the textile, clothing and footwear sector moved into the CFMEU's offices. One of the union secretaries from the textile, clothing and footwear sector told the Age newspaper about the first meeting with the CFMEU:

"It was a male-dominated space," she recalls. "He just went on this big rant and there was fear if anyone tried to say anything it would have just got a lot worse."

One of the union reps stated, in regard to the workplace culture of the CFMEU:

Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable to the point where our division had to leave the building.

These quotes were on the record in February of this year. Senator Lambie spoke, in relation to her private senator's bill, about what had been happening. Her second reading speech detailed Mr Setka's reprehensible behaviour towards women, including these quotes, yet those opposite then would not support Senator Lambie's bill. That is the hypocrisy of the ALP and those opposite. They will support John Setka. They will leave the textile union workers hanging out to dry, having to leave their offices because of jokes about domestic violence. But, when the political heat gets too much, then they're prepared to change. That's something those opposite will have to look in the mirror and make a decision about. Apparently $4.3 million from the CFMEU and the support of the union are more important than standing up against someone who has a record of domestic violence and who intimidated female union members, on the record. That was on the record in February when they voted against the bill. That's why you can't trust those opposite. You can't trust that this bill is actually going to last. As I said, what happens when the political storm dies down? That's why they've brought this in—to die it down. Let's watch, as I said.

As I referenced previously, Stephen McBurney is being targeted for his employment at the AFL, but he is being targeted for the lawful job he did as part of the ABCC. Mr McBurney has umpired over 400 AFL games as well as four grand finals. He is well qualified for the job. He earnt that role at the AFL on merit. Trust me, as a Victorian and a Collingwood supporter, I know it's a tough job being an umpire in the AFL. But that doesn't mean he deserves to be targeted by John Setka. He took cases from the ABCC to courts, and in 91 per cent of those cases it was found that there was a breach of the Fair Work Act. He was doing his job. But what did Mr Setka say about Mr McBurney in his new role? I apologise in advance about some of the language I'm going to use, but I'm going to directly quote Mr Setka because we need to understand the man that those opposite support. This is a quote from Mr Setka: 'We have an obligation to pursue antiunion, antiworker fuckers like him and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of fucking money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full co-operation are going to be a fucking misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.'

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll ask the member to withdraw.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a direct quote.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's still unparliamentary language. I ask you to withdraw.

Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll withdraw, and I'll repeat it again nicely. 'We have an obligation to pursue antiunion, antiworker effers like him, and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of effing money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full cooperation are going to be an effing misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.' I guess we know why Mr Setka never ran for parliament—he clearly wouldn't be parliamentary—but that behaviour is apparently acceptable.

He's targeting an innocent man to make an example of him and to show any other Victorian, any other Australian, that if you try and stand up for workers, if you try and enforce the rule of law, the CFMEU will chase you and will get after you. This is intimidation. This is a deliberate attack on Stephen McBurney, but it's also sending a message to other Australians that, if you try and do a legitimate job, protect workers and protect the rule of law, you will be targeted and chased for the rest of your career. It is a disgrace that that person is trying to do that to an innocent Australian. (Time expired.)

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed, we're here debating the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024, a bill which the government has surprisingly brought forward into the parliament to allow for the demerger of unions, a position which they've bitterly opposed—or, should I say, have been told to oppose by their masters, the union movement, who fund them, get them elected and require significant repayments in return.

We see, as these other industrial relations reforms have been brought before the parliament, it's been an unequivocal requirement for the Labor Party to return to their paymasters what was required for those donations to their campaigns. The union movement is proud of this. They come into the galleries to witness the Labor Party pass legislation that they are told to by the union movement. They celebrate it, and they remind themselves that those donations they give to the Labor Party are very good investments because they can certainly achieve whatever they want from this government in return.

We have a unique situation where this government has been shamed into pursuing this legislation, which is something that is against their platform and certainly against the better judgement of their paymasters, in the parliament, but the behaviour of Mr Setka has become—I won't say 'so extreme', because it's always been this extreme—so publicly revolting and grotesque that it is absolutely untenable for them to resist taking action. What has Mr Setka done? All he's done is publicly discuss what has been the modus operandi of the CFMEU and their predecessor organisations for decades and decades. Previous Labor leaders stood up to them much more effectively, particularly Bob Hawke. Of course, when the old brickies union used to behave like this, Bob Hawke kicked them out of affiliation with the Labor Party. The punishment here is pretty timid, but I suppose the strategists in the government believe that this might at least help them survive some press conferences when they get queried and questioned about the disgusting, despicable and deplorable behaviour of particularly John Setka, but there are many more in the CFMEU.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's your bill. If you're—

An honourable member interjecting—

Right, there we go. You should be proud of that. This bill comes before us because what John Setka has done is said that people that are his political opponents—or, indeed, organisations like the AFL which aren't renowned for being political whatsoever—or particularly against the current government on the issues that are important to them will be punished by the union if they have someone in their employ who the union does not like. And what John Setka has done is publicly ventilate the business model of the CFMEU. In a way, some of us always knew what their modus operandi was, but now, of course, it's much more publicly known: they will punish you if they don't like you. They will punish businesses that they don't like—just ask the Grollo Group in Melbourne. That's one of many examples. If you don't do what they say and if they can't push you around, then you'll be punished. Your costs will go up, your projects will be more expensive, and there'll be significant delays. John Setka laid this out with a degree of pride. The member for Casey just articulated, in some colourful language, what Setka very proudly and publicly said would be the punishment to the AFL if they didn't do what they were told to by the CFMEU.

It's just utterly disgraceful and deplorable that this kind of conduct occurs, and now we have a situation where the government has been shamed into bringing a bill before us to allow one element of the CFMEU to leave it. How is it that the law of the land doesn't allow this to happen as it is? How is that we need to pass legislation? It's currently illegal for the old TCF, who I know very well—I worked in the textile industry, and that union were the union representing the workforce at my company—to leave the CFMEU without legislative change. This is a free country. This is a country that should believe in fundamental principles of freedom of association, and that's not just the freedom to join a union or not but also the freedom for unions to organise how they see fit.

We as a parliament have to change the law because it is illegal for a division of the CFMEU to break away. They find the conduct and behaviour of this union to be so abhorrent and members of its leadership to be so vile and disgusting that they don't want to be associated with them anymore, and they have to come to the Labor government and say: 'Hey, you know that policy that you don't support—to allow us to freely demerge from a union? Well, we'd like you to change your tune on that.' Thanks to significant media coverage about the grotesqueness and disgusting, vile behaviour of John Setka and his cronies, the government has decided that, despite in principle not thinking that a union should be free to demerge—to de-amalgamate—in this case it's hard to defend that in a public setting during a press conference so they'll allow this brief little window of opportunity through the legislation before us to go through the parliament despite opposing it when Jacqui Lambie brought a similar bill forward in the Senate—because the behaviour of John Setka has gotten to the point where it's indefensible.

John Setka was already a disgrace. We already knew that. The member opposite was just bragging about the fact that he was kicked out of the Labor Party, as if they're really tough on these brutal, nasty, awful union leaders that behave in such an appalling way and make jokes about domestic violence and the treatment of women. To trivialise that is pretty low. This guy is still the leader of a union affiliated with the Labor Party, so the CFMEU can still finance the Labor Party in their election campaigns. We had the Prime Minister in question time yesterday bragging about the way unions like the CFMEU are going to be campaigning on nuclear policy. So they're mates with John Setka when he signs the cheques and runs the campaigns that they want, but then they've got this tough talk when he mocks and trivialises domestic violence and when members of another union want to leave a union that he so insidiously controls and can't bear to be in the same building or the same room as him. That's the legislation that we've got in front of us right now.

We shouldn't be having to legislate to allow the free de-amalgamation of unions. It should already be the law of the land, and it should be a permanent right of unions to organise however they want. It shouldn't be legislated, and we shouldn't have to be debating right now an approval for them to separate from the CFMEU. The CFMEU have got form in this area. In my home state of South Australia, the state chapter of the CFMEU has been taken over by John Setka and the Victorian branch. We had a guy called Aaron Cartledge, who was the state secretary of the South Australian union, but John Setka didn't like him. So he got dumped. Instead, the Victorian division of the CFMEU said: 'We're going to take over the South Australian division of the CFMEU, and it's going to be run by the Victorian division of the CFMEU. That's how we're going to organise in South Australia.' Then that Victorian division of the CFMEU—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:24 to 10:36

In conclusion, in Adelaide we have the threat via John Setka that the new headquarters for the Adelaide Crows team will be sabotaged, disrupted, delayed and have enormous cost blowouts. If the AFL doesn't dismiss a very innocent employee of theirs whose great high crime was legally working for the Australian Building and Construction Commission, then that will be the punishment meted out by Mr Setka and his thug mates at the CFMEU. This behaviour is completely disgusting and utterly unsurprising. It underscores why we need to bring back the ABCC. And it definitely underscores the importance not only of passing this bill but also perhaps of the government recognising the fact that it should never have been illegal in the first place for unions to have the right to demerger, particularly in circumstances such as this one. With those comments, I commend the bill to the House.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024 is an important bill. It's an important bill for a number of reasons. First of all, it shows the abject failure of the government to defend the right of Australian workers to go about doing their job without being intimidated by union bosses. What we've seen is the worst kind of intimidation by John Setka and the CFMEU.

There are a couple of points to note here. First of all, while this bill goes a little way to addressing this, it does not go far enough, because the demerger power should be available to all unions across this country so that, when we see the type of lawlessness and thuggery that we're seeing at the moment, it can be dealt with. It is especially important when you look at the CFMEU, because a large part of the workforce represented by the CFMEU is those female workers who work in the textile industries. Why should they have to put up with the intimidation of John Setka and his thugs? Why should they have to be a party to that? Why shouldn't they be allowed to demerge? Why shouldn't other unions be in a position to be able to demerge when this type of lawlessness takes place?

It's also important in that it recognises once again that the government's approach of ceding so much power to union bosses is failing Australian workers right across the country. The reason we're seeing this, more than any other reason, is what has been happening to real wages since this government came to power. Real wages have gone down. What did the Prime Minister say before the last election? 'We're going to make sure that real wages go up.' Well, what has happened in the two years since Labor have been in power? It doesn't matter how they try and spin it by saying, 'Trajectories are looking positive.' I can tell you: Australian workers aren't worried about trajectories. What they are worried about are the actual facts, and the facts are these. In two years of Albanese Labor government, what has happened to real wages? They have gone down. And that is not what the Prime Minister promised—which, once again, shows that the whole industrial relations approach by Tony Burke, about saying to union bosses, 'We're going to give you unfettered power,' has not worked, because the real outcomes on the ground are that real wages, under this government, have fallen, and no amount of spin can get away from those facts.

Let's look at what the CFMEU have been doing with the unfettered powers that they've been given. The most recent example is that of the intimidation against Stephen McBurney. Let's look at Stephen McBurney. Stephen McBurney has umpired over 400 AFL games, as well as four grand finals. Now, as a passionate Richmond supporter, I cannot say that Stephen McBurney has always got every decision right—okay? But I can say that he has been dedicated to umpiring for a very long period of time and has been recognised as having excelled in his profession, because not every umpire gets to adjudicate on four grand finals. You have to be very, very good at your profession, and Stephen McBurney has shown that because he has been given the great honour of umpiring four AFL grand finals. Yet what do we see? Because he undertook lawful employment as head of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which was set up to provide for lawful activity on building sites, John Setka and the CFMEU are going after him. They're intimidating him. They're trying to say to him, 'You should not go about your lawful work.'

I think one of the most disappointing things—and there are a couple of disappointing things, but one of the most disappointing things—was the reaction of the Prime Minister when John Setka came out and said, 'We're going to try and intimidate Mr McBurney out of his profession.' The Prime Minister's response was really, really weak. Rather than saying to John Setka, 'There is no place for your language; there is no place for your intimidation,' and showing real leadership, the Prime Minister almost didn't want to comment on what was occurring. And that was pretty sad.

The other thing that is disappointing—and the two are tied, I think, and this is something that the Australian people need to recognise—is that the CFMEU continue to provide funds, donations, to the ALP. What real leadership would look like is having the Prime Minister stand up and say to John Setka: 'No prime minister will tolerate that type of language and that type of intimidation. And not only that; as a real show of leadership, we are now going to say to the CFMEU: "We will not take your money. If you are going to continue to use the tactics that you use—in many instances, breaking the law—then we will not take your money, because this type of behaviour cannot be tolerated."'

Yet have we seen the Prime Minister show that type of leadership? Sadly, no, we have not. And why? Because, whether we like it or not, the ALP is fully addicted to union donations and they cannot, even in an instance where you're seeing this type of intimidation, cut that umbilical cord between the union funds that flow into ALP coffers and the union influence that results in terms of dictating policy outcomes to the ALP Labor government as a result of that funding. It's time that the Prime Minister showed the type of real leadership that the Australian community is looking for, and stands up to John Setka and his union bovver boys, because we need it.

I'll end here: why is this important? Why is it really important that we have these demerger powers? Why is it really important that we should have these demerger powers across the board? It's important because in a cost-of-living crisis we need to make sure that we're doing everything we can to help improve the real wage outcomes for Australian workers and to improve the costs that everyday Australians are paying at the moment for everything right across the board.

It's of particular importance at the moment when it comes to the construction industry, because one of the things that is occurring at the moment and is occurring at pace is the lift in housing prices. The sad reality is at the moment that for many, many young Australians, that dream of owning your own home is disappearing. It's disappearing because costs continue to rise within the construction industry, costs continue to rise for small businesses involved in the construction industry and costs continue to rise when it comes to major construction in the building industry.

What is one of the largest contributors to those costs? It is the CFMEU. The impost of regulation, the impost of intimidation and the impost of not been able to move without the unions coming down—especially on small businesses—is driving costs up and up and up in the construction industry. That is meaning that the price of building a home continues to rise. The price of building rental accommodation continues to rise, and that is taking that dream away from young Australians of owning their first home, of owning their first flat or of owning their first unit. That is the real crime of the Labor Party's addiction to union funds and to giving unions more and more power, especially to those bosses.

That is why we will support this bill and it's why we will put forward necessary amendments, because it's not only the demerger power that's needed for this one-off example with the CFMEU. It is needed across the board because we want to make sure that real wages go up—as the Prime Minister promised—but at the moment, sadly, they are going down. And we want to make sure that when it comes to that Australian dream, especially for young Australians, of being able to own your first home that we will be able to do the things that are necessary to make that dream a reality for young Australians—not what this government is doing, driving prices higher and higher and making that dream an unreality.

Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise as a proud Melburnian. There are many assessments about the size of Melbourne. On some assessments, Melbourne is already Australia's largest city, but, on most reasonable projections, it will certainly be Australia's largest city. If you go to forums that talk about the future of Melbourne, you will hear this sentence: 'By 2050, Melbourne will be the size of London.' Now, for Melbourne to get to the size of London and still be a place that is livable, that has enough housing, that has the infrastructure needed, that has enough quality schools, hospitals—and we have good hospitals, but would they still be able to manage a population that size?—and transport, and that preserves green space and stays within that proud ranking of being one of the world's most livable cities, is a significant challenge that requires the due attention of state and federal governments and, indeed, local councils.

But where are we at, now, in Melbourne? We heard evidence in this building from Aldi, the supermarket chain, that said that, when they have to build a store, there is a 30 per cent premium for building that in Victoria compared to the rest of the country. Where does that 30 per cent premium come from—to have construction cost so much in Victoria? What does that mean for our ability to meet all of the challenges that will be required, to have the infrastructure for a population the size of London in 2050?

A lot of people in this place are scared of having discussions and debates about what Australia will look like in 2050, including as to energy. We're having that debate now. This particular bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024, is about that too. If we are to have, in Australia's largest city, a permanent premium of 30 per cent on building—and that can only grow—we have to ask, first: why?

I refer to an article in the Saturday Paper. These two paragraphs stood out to me. They talk about a meeting that happened in Festival Hall. For those from Melbourne, you know what Festival Hall is and where it is. The article says:

When Festival Hall first opened, in 1913, it quickly became known as "The House of Stoush"—a boxing and wrestling venue and then, later, a home to roller derbies. This week, thousands of Setka's construction workers arrived in their high-vis and union-branded hoodies for the meeting. To Setka's … satisfaction, they reached capacity and spilled out the doors.

In that meeting, we read:

The EBA was ratified by members, securing a 21 per cent pay rise staggered over the next five years …

That included conditions: that the right to raise union flags would be mandatory, and that union officials could enter sites without permission if a builder invited them.

For those of you from Melbourne, if you drive through my electorate on the North East Link, you'll see that all of the cranes are branded, as if a student has tagged their tag on a building with some graffiti. It's not your construction site; it's not the people of Melbourne's; it's the CFMEU's. By using those mandatory flags, they are saying who owns this town. It's theirs; it's not yours. Never forget: this isn't about class; this isn't about lifting people up—those are the talking points. This is about raw power and the exercise of power—not for your interests, but for their interests. And that power has only ever been constrained when the federal government has stood up to it.

What we have seen from this government is that, when that power should have been stood up to, the opposite has happened—and, even then, the minister has had to acknowledge that, when we've seen, in broad daylight, the exercise of that power and the bullying tactics used. For that to be said out loud, in that circumstance, we know: conversations are being had in private. What are they? What intimidation has been happening throughout Victorian businesses in the construction sector? We ask ourselves why in the last financial year Victoria was the only state that saw an aggregate decline in small businesses. There were about 7,000 fewer when you aggregate those that opened and those that closed. There's always a churn, but there had never been that decline in numbers. Compare that to Queensland, where there was an aggregate increase of 11,000. A key part of that was movement south to north. But we can't rely on businesses just surviving or transferring to Queensland and hoping it's better when it's the construction sector, because, for Melbourne to be a liveable city that can accommodate that many people by 2050, we require an efficient, fair construction sector.

Let's go to the interview that prompted this discrete amendment. Stephen McBurney is the head of officiating for the AFL. He's umpired over 400 AFL games and four grand finals. So what is Mr Setka's issue with Mr McBurney? It's simple: it's a line on his CV that he objected to and he sought to wield bullying control over. Mr McBurney in a previous life was head of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. What happened there? That was a commission that brought forward evidence of the CFMEU's bullying, thuggery and intimidation, and that wasn't just Mr McBurney coming to that view; he presented that evidence to the courts, and the courts found as much. They were found to have breached the Fair Work Act in 91 per cent of cases and they were fined millions of dollars for this.

What did Mr Setka say in response? I know we're not allowed to swear in this place, so I'm going use the euphemism of a 'fire truck'. I think we know what that means. He said: 'We have an obligation to pursue anti-union, antiworker fire truckers like him, and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of fire trucking money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full cooperation are going to be a fire trucking misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.'

Think about that. Who speaks like that? Who speaks like that in public? You have to ask yourself: if that's what they say in public, if that's the language they use in 2024, what do they say in private when no-one is looking? What do they say when it's not the AFL? The AFL is no shrinking violet; it is a large institution with lots of money and supporters throughout this country, and he still chose to do that in that form. So what does he say to the small business or to the medium business? What happens behind closed doors? We know the answer to that. It's borne out in the flight of businesses out of Victoria, in the premium of costs to build large construction projects. The SRL on a 30-year timeline will cost $216 billion. That's the cost now. The North East Link, originally a $10 billion project, is now $26 billion.

What did the Prime Minister say when he was presented with this evidence? He said, 'Don't question me on it, because it will encourage him.' Can you imagine what the Prime Minister would do if a leader of any other institution had threatened another in that way? That is weak. It is impotent. Again, we have to ask why. We quite rightly hear a lot of talk about how there needs to be an increase in character and integrity in this place. That can take its form in institutions, but it's also in how we conduct ourselves, how we speak and the decisions that we make. There is no more important test of integrity than when your personal interests clash with what it is doing right. You had two doors and you choose which one you walk through. It is only when self-interest clashes with what it is doing right that you see the true measure of character. So the Prime Minister would have noted that in one of those doors was the risk of offending a person in a union that has donated $4.3 million dollars to his political party. In the other door was doing what was right.

It's not just standing up for the AFL; it is standing up for the mum-and-dad businesses and for the Victorians who want better-quality infrastructure delivered more quickly and cheaply. They're not getting that, and we certainly won't be the liveable city we're proud of—certainly not by 2050, when Melbourne's population will be the size of London's. The Prime Minister had a choice. He had a choice to choose principle over power, and he chose power. That's why we're left with this piecemeal amendment, which seeks to fix up a discrete problem.

That's not how we should do legislation in this place. It shouldn't be driven by the power, circumstances or particular factions that might have numbers that'll influence something. You should take a principled position. That demerger right should be there across the board. The Prime Minister had a choice between power and principle, and he chose power. We condemn him for it.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This month the weak leadership of Prime Minister Albanese has been exposed by the belligerence of John Setka, the Victoria-Tasmania secretary of the CFMEU. After we on this side of the House moved our bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024, to allow the manufacturing division to demerge from the militant union, Labor have been embarrassed into acting. There is no clearer case, story or study of the weakness of the Prime Minister's leadership than their obedience to their union masters, and I will catalogue those impacts on my electorate of Mallee shortly.

At long last, despite opposing a proposal of this very same nature in February, the Albanese Labor government are now allowing the manufacturing division to demerge from the CFMEU. We have seen the belligerence of Mr Setka, with his threats to the AFL construction projects because of a grudge against Stephen McBurney, former commissioner of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC, from 2018 to 2023. Mr McBurney is a former AFL umpire with over 400 games experience up to 2011, including four AFL grand finals in the 2000s. In April this year, the AFL appointed Mr McBurney as head of the AFL's umpiring department, drawing Mr Setka's fire and ire. I note that Mr McBurney was responsible for bringing evidence before the courts of the CFMEU's bullying, thuggery and intimidation, and the CFMEU were found to have breached the Fair Work Act in 91 per cent of cases.

What did Mr Setka say about Mr McBurney? I'll be bleeping where I can't say the word: "We have an obligation to pursue anti-union, antiworker bleepers like him, and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of bleeping money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full cooperation are going to be a bleeping misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.' Yet, when the press gallery asked the Prime Minister about Mr Setka's comments, he begged, 'Don't question me on it, because it will just encourage him.' That sounds like the pleading of a hostage, not the Prime Minister of Australia.

The coalition re-established the ABCC in 2016 after a double-dissolution election. Labor shut the ABCC down between December 2022 and February 2023, leaving our construction industry and its more than 400,000 small businesses at the CFMEU's mercy. In tandem with the Registered Organisations Commission, the coalition had established watchdogs to prevent bullying, thuggery and intimidation from unions like the CFMEU on worksites, but Labor has abolished them both. The coalition gave teeth to the watchdogs, but Labor are lapdogs to militant unions like the CFMEU.

The demerger we are debating today is the one that the manufacturing division sought in January 2023, but the move was rejected by the Fair Work Commission. Division secretary Michael O'Connor told Nine media that the manufacturing division had 'been the victims of a whole range of attacks by the construction division' and there had been 'no attempt to resolve continuous attacks and sniping by construction'. At that time, I note the mining division had also applied to the FWC to break away from the CFMMEU. Little wonder that the manufacturing division have requested a secret ballot on the demerger question.

Let's not forget the CFMEU's track record towards women, of which there is a higher proportion in the manufacturing division. The coalition's efforts to allow them to demerge have been to give women a voice, to let them stand up to the thuggish bullying and misogynistic culture of the CFMEU. One of the union representatives described the workplace culture of the CFMEU offices:

Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable to the point where our division had to leave the building.

In 2014 a female ABCC inspector reported visiting the Barangaroo casino hotel construction in Sydney was surrounded by 40 CFMEU members, who used a loudhailer to call her words I can't put on record—but a disgusting slur, with profanity, against a woman. There are plenty more examples.

In 2020 the coalition in government legislated to allow parts of amalgamated unions to demerge if they felt it was in their best interest. This was to ensure unions were fairer representatives of their members. However, during the union controlled Labor 2021 Special Platform Conference, they committed to 'union demerger reform reversing the Morrison governments legislative changes that make it easier for unions to demerge'. Despite the CFMEU's history of bullying, thuggery and misogyny, Labor removed the right to demerger and persistently failed to stand up to Mr Setka. That was until, and only until, a footy code was threatened. Then, after some handwringing and goodness knows what else behind closed doors, the minister announced a demerger would be allowed, saying, 'That attack on the AFL really made the decision clear and made the timing immediate.' This is nothing but pathetic.

Labor has known for a long time about the CFMEU's appalling track record of economic disruption. Federal Circuit Court Judge Salvatore Vasta described the CFMEU as 'the most recidivist corporate offender in Australian history'. Federal Court Justice Jessup said:

The CFMEU's record of non-compliance with legislation of this kind has now become notorious … That record ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement.

Federal Court Judge Jarrett said:

The CFMEU has as egregious record of repeated and wilful contraventions of all manner of industrial laws.

Federal Justice Flick said:

The CFMEU has long demonstrated by its conduct that it pays but little regard to compliance with the law and indeed has repeatedly sought to place itself above the law.

Federal Circuit Court Judge Vasta said:

It seems that the CFMEU feel that they can usurp Parliament and that they can set the law in this country. There is no place for such an attitude in Australian society.

Let me give a few Victorian examples of what the CFMEU have done to stymie construction work in our state. In 2017 the CFMEU and 10 of its officials were fined a total of $590,800 for unlawful industrial action at nine construction sites across Victoria. The sites include four hospitals and an aged-care centre. In 2017 the CFMEU was ordered to pay $100,000 in penalties for unlawfully blockading a major Port of Melbourne expansion project and threatening to bring 20,000 workers to join the fight. In 2014 and 2015 the CFMEU was forced to pay a variety of fines and compensation payments in relation to its unlawful blockading of the Melbourne CBD Emporium site, including $3.55 million in damages, $1.25 million for breach of court orders and another $115,000 in penalties for organising the unlawful industrial action.

Another example of the CFMEU's economic impact is one I've had constituents raise with me, and we hear it all over the country—road traffic controllers being paid over $200,000 per annum for holding a 'stop/slow' sign at roadworks. That arrangement was secured through Setka's Victorian branch of the CFMEU. Little wonder that construction costs are going up so much, and that goes to the point of the economic impact of the CFMEU's behaviour. The only financial impact Labor care about is the $4.3 million the CFMEU gave them before the last election.

The weakness of this union-controlled Labor government hits home for my electorate of Mallee when it comes to policies rolled out in regional Australia without a care or concern for—or, it seems, awareness of—the reality of working on the land. The prominent recent 'same job, same pay' industrial relations changes—rebranded with spin as the 'closing loopholes' bill—saw National Farmers Federation president David Jochinke respond in September that farmers are now left to grapple with how they engage employees through labour hire during harvest, the busiest time of the year. In December it was Merry Christmas to union bosses and thanks for all your support, but to Australian businesses it was a lump of coal under the tree.

Union-controlled Labor are bulldozing the industrial relations landscape, where all you can see is the barren land of a union-controlled employment monoculture. Employment diversity and flexibility are gone. Labor's IR agenda, at the unions' behest, reversed decades of history, where Australia had moved away from centralised wage fixing towards pay and conditions that were based on productivity and reward for effort. Who would think it? Labor has reinstated the age of entitlement, and the most entitled of all of are the CFMEU, thanks to their donations to Labor.

In my electorate of Mallee, our farmers and small-business owners are the casualties. One farmer in my electorate said:

The obstacles that could be put in the way of small family farms and businesses by this legislation are nothing short of catastrophic and naive, written by those who have no experience of how small communities are the backbone of the Australian way of life.

In Labor's two years in government, Labor have taken away piece rates in horticulture, which paid reward for effort on the basis of how much fruit was picked, and forced farmers to pay workers an hourly wage—same job, same pay; the lifter and the slacker paid the same, with no incentive for productivity or efficiency. Union-controlled Labor binned the ag visa the Nationals fought for and established when in government. Union-controlled Labor imposed a higher salary for migrants on the temporary skilled migration income threshold, or TSMIT, lifting it from $53,900 minimum salary to $70,000. Union-controlled Labor imposed a 30-hour week pay requirement for workers brought into the country on the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility, or PALM, scheme.

Labor's lapdog action for the unions is rolled out on country people like Mallee voters as their primary experiments. It's all part of Labor's scorched-earth approach to regional Australia, which is, I repeat, by design: experiment on the farmers and, if they get away with it, roll it out on all small businesses. Union-controlled Labor want to come into the family farming home as well, rolling out the red carpet for the likes of the CFMEU right into the kitchens of family homes on farms. Labor have given unions the right to enter farms unannounced, intruding on people's privacy and threatening the personal safety of farmers and their families.

In the May budget, Labor removed funding for the successful coalition-initiated Harvest Trail program. This exposes the lip-service Labor pays to the topic of exploitation. Labor axed funding and the jobs of those providing a service that prevented the potential exploitation of harvest workers—for instance, on working holiday visas. This funding decision was made despite a resurgence of backpacker labourers since the pandemic—more, in fact, than before the pandemic. The Nationals have worked very hard to help secure the workers needed in horticulture, which dominates my electorate of Mallee, but union-controlled Labor couldn't bulldoze our employment landscape fast enough. They don't care about the impact on the farmers and yet again are exposed for not caring one bit about the cost of living. While farmers are price takers, in some instances the food shortages produced by Labor's policy will be felt at supermarket check-outs in higher fruit and vegetable prices. Union-controlled Labor's belated action with this bill demonstrates that, yet again, we have a weak Prime Minister and a government distracted by its pet projects and pleasing their union masters, with no concern about the cost of living and the cost of doing business.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024, because with this bill we are cleaning up the mess that the Labor Party has created. Labor had perfectly good laws in place left to them by the coalition, which allowed for unions to demerge when honest unions didn't want to be associated with the criminal gangs and thugs of aspects of the CFMEU. At the behest of their union paymasters, the CFMEU, which gave them $4.3 million—that's a figure you'll hear me say many times in this speech—impressed upon Labor the need to remove the demerger provisions.

Now Labor have done a massive backflip, seen the error of their ways and understood that honest workers and honest union officials shouldn't have to hang out with people who have a rap sheet longer than my arm and people who treat orders of court with contempt—CFMEU officials famously wallpaper their toilets with contempt of court notices—but that's what they have been forced to do until we restore these demerger provisions that allow unions to make a choice about which unions they want to be part of.

I think the conduct of aspects of the CFMEU in relation to unions dominated by women has been a disgrace. I particularly think that, in the context of the textiles division of the CFMEU—a part of the economy that is dominated by female workers—the threats and intimidation that have been placed upon union officials in the textiles division, particularly women, is a disgrace. We should not accept in any form harassment of women in the workplace, yet that has been allowed to go unchecked and those officials will have to remain part of the CFMEU until these laws restore the coalition's perspective, the coalition's position, which allows honest unions to demerge from unions which are crooked.

In the textiles division of the CFMEU, one of the union secretaries told The Age newspaper about her first meeting with the CFMEU. She says:

It was a male-dominated space. He just went on this big rant and there was fear if anyone tried to say anything it would have just got a lot worse.

One of the union reps stated with regard to the workplace culture of the CFMEU offices:

Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable to the point where our division had to leave the building.

That's the culture of the CFMEU—a culture that people should not put up with for one day in any workplace, yet the organisation in our community that is actually supposed to stand up for workers was creating a workplace that was littered with harassment. That's why it's really important that, if the textiles division wants to demerge from the CFMEU, they are able to do so. We provided for that avenue in 2020 when we made amendments to the legislation to allow for union demergers. But Labor, because they are in thrall to the union movement, decided to reverse that. This bill is about restoring the position put in place by the coalition.

At the dark heart of the CFMEU, an organisation which founded and funds the Labor Party, is John Setka—one of the most violent and contemptuous union officials this country has ever known. In late August 2019, Setka's estranged wife provided a sworn statement to police detailing a serious incident where Mr Setka had physically assaulted her. She said:

John was out of control. He hit my head against the table about five times. It was very painful. John is a lot bigger and stronger than me and he can totally physically control me. When he loses his temper, there isn't anything I can do but submit to him.

When are the CFMEU going to clean up their act and get rid of this man? He shouldn't be representing any worker. The standard you walk by is the standard you accept, and for the CFMEU to have a man like this engaged in leading their union is a terrible thing. For the Australian Labor Party to accept $4.3 million dollars in donations from an organisation led by this man is an extraordinary thing in the context of our country. That somebody has engaged in these terrible threats, not just to women in his workplace but to his own estranged wife, is something that we in this country shouldn't put up with.

Mr Setka and the CFMEU have it in for umpires. They don't like umpires of any sort. They didn't like the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which was the umpire in their industry. They particularly did not like Mr McBurney, who was the head official at the AFL. That's why this has come to a head. It's not come to a head because of Mr Setka's conduct and the conduct of CFMEU officials in their own building, creating a threatening workplace for women in the textiles division of the CFMEU. It's come to a head because of the threats that Mr Setka has made in relation to the AFL. The head of officiating—the head umpire, effectively—is someone who once worked, effectively, as the umpire in the building industry. And because Mr Setka never likes to be held to account, because the CFMEU don't like the idea that they will be held to account by someone, they engage in threatening and intimidatory conduct. That's why the government's hand has been forced here.

I think it's worthwhile listening to some of Mr Setka's own words in relation to Stephen McBurney—a man who has discharged his duties as an umpire and official in the AFL in an exemplary fashion for hundreds and hundreds of games, just as he discharged his duties as an official of the ABCC in an exemplary manner too. And yet, Mr Setka has complete contempt for a fine Australian in Stephen McBurney. Mr Setka is fond of using the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon is a word that is probably unparliamentary, so I'm going to take a page out of the book of my friend, the Manager of the Opposition Business, and, where Mr Setka would use the Anglo-Saxon, I'm going to use the words 'flip' and 'flipping'. He said: 'I think it'll have implications for the AFL right across Australia. We have an obligation to pursue anti-union, anti-worker flippers like him and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of flipping money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full cooperation are going to be a flipping misery for them.' These are the threatening words of John Setka, because the AFL has, as their head of the officiating, someone who once tried to hold him to account, and successfully held him and his union to account, on building sites.

Mr Setka says of the AFL: 'They will regret the day they ever employed him … We will use every resource we have to pursue him … They don't just walk away from a role like that, cost the union millions of dollars and just think they can walk into the flipping sunset. It doesn't work that way … This is the real world. We go after our enemies, and he was our number one enemy, and we will pursue him until the ends of the earth.' Mr Setka doesn't sound like a person who's there to argue for the rights of workers; he sounds like a terrorist. This is an extraordinary mindset for somebody leading a union that controls the preselection of Labor Party members and donates $4.3 million to the Labor Party. This is just extraordinary.

Mr Setka goes on to say of Mr McBurney and his role in the AFL, and of what will happen if the AFL keeps Mr Burney:

If it's work to rule, and we just work our basic hours, things are going to drag out forever—

and projects will mostly run over budget—

We are not going to stop a whole stadium, but for projects of this nature to get delivered, they have to have the full cooperation on site, and that means a lot of flexibility, a lot of give and take.

We get our blokes to work RDOs, sometimes on long weekends. We have a meeting and say, "Look, the job's behind, they need to deliver this on time."

And, 'Let me tell you, god help them if their schedule is ever out of flipping whack, because we will not be bending over backwards to do a flipping thing to help them. It's going to be a hard slog for them.' Mr Setka has said that the union has an obligation to pursue former ABCC officers and wreck their careers, wherever they are. It's just extraordinary that a person who's supposed to be there to create safe working environments is actually pursuing other workers in a way that makes their own work environment unsafe.

It seems unprecedented, except that it's not. We know that this conduct has been going on for generations in the CFMEU. And it's not just Mr Setka; I don't want you to think that he's an isolated example in the CFMEU context. There are other CFMEU officials who have also held Mr McBurney in contempt because Mr McBurney was trying to do his job. He did his job lawfully at the ABCC, and now he's trying to do his job lawfully as the head of officiating at the AFL. Take Mr Zachary Smith, the CFMEU's national secretary. He said of Mr McBurney:

… as the head of the disgraced ABCC, Stephen McBurney brought untold misery to the lives of workers he unfairly demonised and the branch is very rightly expressing the genuine anger of its members.

The national union is yet to discuss potential action against the AFL, but there's zero doubt the pain the ABCC caused under McBurney is still being deeply felt by construction workers across Australia.

There was no pain for construction workers. There was only pain for union officials and only pain for union officials who were engaged in standover tactics and who were creating intimidatory workplaces in the construction sector. That's why the CFMEU hates them. That's why CFMEU has pursued a vendetta against people who once worked for the ABCC. That's why the CFMEU is engaged in the work of trying to discredit Mr McBurney—a very distinguished umpire, a very distinguished public servant—and make his life, and the life of the AFL, who have employed him, hell.

But this goes further than the CFMEU. Let me also quote from the Victorian Trades Hall Council Secretary, Luke Hilakari. He said that 'people's reputations follow them' and went on to say:

AFL is a working-class sport and his—

Mr McBurney's—

track record of blowing the whistle on the unions puts him at odds with many fans.

I think Mr McBurney's record as an umpire—fair decisions in the workplace; fair decisions on the playing field—puts him on side with many fans. That's what we need more of in this country—people who will stand against lawlessness—because we are seeing lawlessness in too many parts of our country.

I think the role that the CFMEU plays in the Labor Party, founding the Labor Party and funding the Labor Party, helps explain why we are seeing lawlessness across our country and the Labor Party refusing to take action on so many fronts. Fundamentally, those in the CFMEU conduct themselves in a lawless manner, and they want to get away with it, and they have a political party in this place that bends over backwards to change laws to make it easier for the CFMEU to engage in lawlessness. When we ask ourselves the questions: 'Why are we seeing a growth in lawlessness across the entire Australian community at the moment? And why is this federal government, under Anthony Albanese, failing to take action?' it is because the very way the Labor Party is set up, the very purpose of the Labor Party, is to help people engage in lawless activities like that activity engaged in by the CFMEU.

When we look at Australia today, we are seeing lawlessness in every level, whether it's the return of the unions flexing their muscle on buildings sites because of the abolition of the ABCC; whether it is people smugglers thumbing their noses at our border protection policies and this Labor government allowing hardened criminals, rapists and murderers, to run around the country unsupervised and continue to commit crimes; whether it is the growth of knife crimes in my city, knife crimes in Western Sydney and knife crimes in Bondi; whether it is the growth in graffiti; whether it is the terrible inaction of this government to stop antisemitism on campus; or whether it is the unabated growth in domestic violence that we have seen, this temperature of and growth in lawlessness are created by a government that refuses to stand for law-abiding citizens. That's why it is so important that we, on this side of the House, hold the government to account, because, if the government had its way, it would continue to promote lawlessness.

It's the reason we are here today. The government wanted to have a situation where the poor workers in the textiles division of the CFMEU—women who were going about their job of representing other women at the workplace, and were doing so in an honest fashion—were not able to leave the CFMEU. The CFMEU is an organisation packed with people like Mr Setka—a man fond of using the Anglo-Saxon; a man who has a rap sheet longer than my arm; a man who treats Federal Court orders with contempt. They wanted to force the poor officials and workers at the textiles division to stay with these people.

When a marriage is not working, we say: people should have the right to bust up; people should have the right to go their separate ways. That's why, in 2020, it was a coalition government that enacted laws to allow demergers to happen in the union movement. That's why, in 2020, in the face of union opposition, we demonstrated leadership. We demonstrated that we wanted to stand with the law-abiding instead of standing with corrupt union officials.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:29 to 11:48

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

The fact that Liberal member after Liberal member is coming in here on an industrial relations matter and saying what a great bill this is and why they're going to support it, ought to give the government pause for thought about what it's doing.

When they were in power the Liberals were ferociously anti-union. They established and maintained the Australian Building and Construction Commission, which was effectively an industrial police force for one industry only, which meant that if you happened to work in the construction industry you had fewer rights than workers in other industries. You lost your right to silence, you could be hauled into secret interviews and forced to name names and answer questions. There were massive penalties imposed on people, simply because of the industry that they worked in. And it was clearly designed to do the bidding of the Liberals and the bidding of the big corporations to attack workers' rights. It also undermined the rule of law. There should be a general principle in this country that says that the law applies across the board equally, everyone's entitled to the same protections and, if you break the law, then there's a system for dealing with it, which is that you get a presumption of innocence, you get taken into the courts and the judge decides whether or not you've broken the law. This idea to start having really draconian provisions, where you take away people's basic rights just because of the industry that they work in, is incredibly destructive—not just for the rights of the people who work in the construction industry but for the rule of law in general.

The Liberals also had a huge range of legislation. One of the biggest pieces of legislation ever written, from a party that supposedly believed in deregulation, was the Work Choices legislation, where they were quite happy to sit down at the table and tie the hands of workers as they tried to negotiate. This party of so-called non-market interferers was very happy to say: 'You can't have these provisions in your agreement, even if you can negotiate them. You can't have provisions that protect apprentices. You can't have provisions that are designed to give workers a seat at the table and the ability to have a say in decisions that the company is making that affect them.'

The Liberals were very happy to get in and regulate down to the most micro aspect about what happened in particular workplaces and to take away the rights of workers across the board, including construction workers. They also had provisions in their laws that were aimed at weakening unions. We've seen huge numbers of those laws that were around weakening unions' rights regarding right of entry and right to strike. But they also had provisions in there that were clearly coming from a Liberal government that said: 'We don't like strong unions, so we're going to have provisions in the laws that are designed to say that we want to encourage the weakening of unions and the breaking apart of strong unions.' That was the Liberal way.

We now have a bill that seeks to reinstate some of those provisions, and it's why Liberal member after Liberal member is lining up to say, 'What a great idea.' I want the government to seriously think about this and the path that they're embarking on. Once you do this for one union, people are going to say: 'Well, what about me? Shouldn't this apply across the board?' It becomes increasingly difficult to justify the laws that you've got in place when you start saying you're going to make exceptions for one, and then you somehow expect that, when the Liberals line up and say, 'Great; you're reintroducing part of our laws for this,' they're not going to keep coming back and asking for more and more. You've just given them a justification for it. You've just said, 'We want to turn the clock back and have Liberal-era laws in place, and we're going to target one particular union.' But, as the national secretary of the CFMEU, Zach Smith, pointed out: 'This bill risks setting a dangerous precedent for anti-worker ideologues in future coalition governments to break up unions.'

So I really want the government to think seriously about what it is they're doing here. I know a lot has been said during the course of debate about the actions of particular individuals. Again, I come back to the point—and maybe this is an old-fashioned view—that the rule of law applies because there's a law that applies and, if you break the law, there's a process for dealing with it. But, if what you're going to do is actually come in here and legislate specifically for one union, I say to Labor again: you have just opened the door. Again, ask yourself: why is it that Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker is coming in here and saying what a terrific idea this is?

The Greens have a straightforward principle position, which is why we opposed the ABCC—and we're very pleased that the government delivered on a commitment to abolish the ABCC. That was a really good move from Labor because, as I said before, that was effectively a secret industrial police force for one area only. It meant that, if you happened to work in that area, you had fewer rights than your colleagues, including things like the right to silence. That was a good move.

It is a bit shocking to see them now saying, 'Actually, we want to reinstate some of it,' because generally, as I said, what we should have is a system of laws that applies across the board. If you break those laws, the system should be holding you to account. Also, when it comes to unions and their fate, they should comply with the laws that exist and are in place at the time. If there is a case to make for changing those laws generally, then come in and make it, but it is a really worrying precedent in terms of what this government is doing. I urge the government to rethink this question and ask themselves why it is you don't see Labor members standing up here and speaking on this. You only see coalition members. If you're bringing in legislation that the coalition thinks is a terrific idea, are you doing the right thing?

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024 puts back into law policy and legislation of the former coalition government. It was good law back then and it remains good law today, as we have seen with the Labor Party backflip. It is a union demerger law. Unions have had a very important role in the history of Australia. It is important that honest and good workers should be able to join and remain in honest and good unions. If the union that they have joined proves to be dishonest, bad or dangerous for them, then workers should be able to move out of that union. Similarly, as we are seeing with this legislation, this relates to a division of the CFMEU being able to move out of the existing CFMEU, which in my view has always been toxic but has become even more toxic in the last few years, particularly under the stewardship of John Setka, and I will come to that in a moment.

By way of background, in 2020 the coalition government brought in legislation that said unions could demerge from larger unions. With his workplace relations agenda, one of the first things Minister Burke did when this government was elected was repeal the Australian Building and Construction Commission. That was a body that had been set up by the former government to specifically help and protect workers on building and construction sites. It was investigating workplace breaches in that industry, and it was very successful. The Labor Party came in and said, 'Oh, no, we need to remove that,' because the CFMEU, which had been sued successfully in 91 per cent of cases by the ABCC, told the Labor Party, in return for the $4.3 million it donated to the Labor Party's last election campaign, 'Quick, Minister Burke, you must get rid of this legislation.' So the minister did. Then, last year, the minister also repealed the union demerger laws that were brought in under the coalition. And today he is bringing back those coalition laws. Why? Because it was good workplace relations law. But it is a significant backflip, and it has been a backflip that the government has only been brought to by yet more egregious actions by John Setka.

This legislation has been brought in to allow the manufacturing division of the CFMEU to effectively demerge from the CFMEU. That division is made up of many textile workers, largely females, who have had to bear the brunt of the thuggery of the CFMEU and, particularly, John Setka. Union officials and union workers should not be forced to stay in a union that makes them uncomfortable. They should not be forced to be in a workplace that makes them uncomfortable, a workplace where we have seen specific examples of culture that is completely out of step with modern Australia and modern Australian workplaces. And John Setka's behaviour over the last few weeks has clearly demonstrated why the coalition government was right to legislate union demerger laws back in 2020 and why Labor was wrong to repeal them.

I think we need to look at all of the workers who make up those in the CFMEU. The CFMEU, of course, has many who work in the construction industry. These are our builders, electricians, plumbers, bricklayers, tilers, roofers, glaziers—our tradies. I have many of them in my electorate in southern and south-western Sydney. In the midst of a housing affordability crisis, when we all know that the main driver of the current crisis is the lack of supply of housing, the cost of construction within the construction industry has never been as high. Small businesses within this industry have particularly borne the brunt of this. Simultaneously we are seeing more and more of these construction companies going into liquidation, at record rates. This has happened in the past two years and it has happened for a number of reasons. There have been a lot of material supply issues, but it is also demonstrative of the lack of productivity that is occurring in many aspects of the construction industry.

This is at a time when we desperately need to build more houses and apartments. We need our construction industry to be thriving. We need it to be productive. And, for the many workers in this industry, we need it to be safe. We should be strengthening and supporting the construction sector, and one of the major handbrakes in the construction industry is the CFMEU. Statistics show that, on most sites controlled by the CFMEU, the productivity levels are around 2.8 days per week. Is it any wonder, therefore, that so many of our construction companies are going to the wall? No business can survive when its workforce is only productive for 2.58 days per week. So there is a direct link between the CFMEU and the lack of productivity in the construction industry and the number of construction companies that are going to the wall.

When we read the headlines about construction companies going into liquidation, we know that the workers within that company will have to look for a new job, but there is also the fact that the person who is building a home may then be left with half a home or three-quarters of a home. They are very badly impacted by the construction company going broke, and they have to go and find another construction company to finish their building work. This has a very big flow-on impact for the whole of Australian society.

I will turn to some of the other workers who are currently within the CFMEU. These are the workers that want to leave the CFMEU. The textile, clothing and footwear sector, which has the greatest number of females, has faced significant issues within the CFMEU. We've heard from various inquiries that it is a toxic, male-dominated culture, with jokes about domestic violence and specific incidents of violence and harassment by John Setka, in particular. This has all contributed to make the CFMEU an unsafe place for these women to work.

Over the last few weeks, John Setka's most recent behaviour and that of the militant CFMEU have clearly shown why the coalition was right to legislate union demergers and why Labor was wrong to repeal them. It all goes back to the ABCC. Setka's history of lawlessness and his recent attacks on Stephen McBurney of the AFL clearly highlight these ongoing issues. Labor's response was weak, with the Minister for Sport unwilling to answer questions and the Prime Minister unwilling to answer questions. Was their reluctance to answer those questions at all influenced by the $4.3 million that the CFMEU provided to the Labor Party at the last election? If it was, this clearly shows that the ALP that espouses and promotes itself as the party of the worker has been sold out, because that is not the action of a party that is actually there for the worker. It is the action of a party that was desperate to win an election and would happily take $4.3 million of money from thugs and bullies.

What we've seen in most recent times is Setka's threats against McBurney and the AFL, and—as I said—the Labor government's unwillingness to condemn these actions. Minister Burke admitted that the government is only acting now because of the attack on the AFL. Minister Burke has known for years and decades about John Setka's behaviour. He's known for years and decades about the behaviour of the CFMEU. He has known about the bullying of women within that union and within those workplaces, yet he did not prioritise this until it looked as though the government—in Victoria, particularly—was being held over a barrel by this union. Labor's actions on all of this are driven by political pressure and financial influence. They're not driven by genuine concern for workers. If they were, the Labor Party would have acted on this a long, long time ago.

I'll turn briefly to the textile clothing and footwear sector. After the merger, which was forced upon them, they moved into the CFMEU's offices. These are some of the quotes that some of the workers within the textiles union have said. One of the union secretaries, for example, told the Age newspaper about the first meeting with the CFMEU. She said:

It was a male dominated space. He just went on this big rant and there was fear if anyone tried to say anything it would have just got a lot worse.

One of the union reps also stated, with regard to the workplace culture of the CFMEU offices:

Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable, to the point where our division had to leave the building.

Minister Burke was well aware of this. He didn't just become aware of this in the last few days. This has been a culture that has been there for a long period of time.

Earlier this year, when Senator Lambie in the other place brought in a private senator's bill that would have allowed the manufacturing division—which includes the textiles union—to demerge from the CFMEU, the government said that they would not be supporting her bill. The government has now largely rewritten Senator Lambie's legislation, and that is what is before us today.

In conclusion, I want to point to some of the comments that have been made by the courts about the CFMEU, because these are, of course, independent bodies. Some of the comments that have been made by some of our judges when they have been looking into the actions and conduct of the CFMEU include Justice Salvatore Vasta from the Federal Circuit Court:

The most recidivist corporate offender in Australian history.

Then we have Justice Jessup from the Federal Court:

The CFMEU's record of non-compliance with legislation has now become notorious … That record ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement.

Then we have Judge Jarrett of the Federal Circuit Court:

The CFMEU has an egregious record of repeated and wilful contraventions of all manner of industrial laws.

This is a union that contributed $4.3 million to the Labor Party in the last election. This is what is being said by judges who have looked into specific conduct of the CFMEU. Their record speaks for itself.

The legislation that's before this place is legislation that simply puts back into law the very good law relating to union demergers that the coalition government brought in in 2020. It should never have been repealed. That much is evident.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024 is a good piece of legislation, and I rise to support it. My question—I've got many questions—is: when are all the ALP people coming in to speak in support of this piece of legislation? I don't see any of them. The newly minted member for Cook—welcome to this place—must be shocked that the Labor Party aren't coming in here to support their own piece of legislation. It's strange.

I start by saying that the trade unions and trade unionism are important parts of our society. Trade unions have done good things over the course of the past 100 years in Australia—and even going back further than that in other parts of the world. The concept that workers come together and ensure that there are safe working conditions and decent pay is something that absolutely all of us agree with.

The trouble with the trade union movement in Australia is that it moved on from getting correct wage increases and those correct and important safety standards and went into the business of not working necessarily in Australia's interests but pushing too far in the antiproductivity space. That wasn't always the case. I've often said in this place that Australia had a very good Labor government in the 1980s. I've also said that that has turned out to be an aberration. The Hawke government—and I also want to give credit to the then leader of the ACTU, Bill Kelty—worked together in Australia's interests to try and move productivity forward. I congratulate that government for that collaboration in working for the common good—the opposition back in the eighties were supportive of this too—and that reform agenda. That modernising of the economy was important.

What we have now is an ALP that is timid in the face of union power. I congratulate them on this piece of legislation. I think it should go further. I think that there are many unions that would like to demerge. This one relates to the textile union. But the way the CFMEU behaves today, the way that their leader speaks and behaves and the general attitude towards Australian industry is a far cry from the ACTU of the 1980s.

As people know, I'm a first-termer. So I'm relatively new to this, but I come from a place where entrepreneurial spirit and private enterprise is valued. Export markets are important to that free enterprise and that entrepreneurial spirit in my electorate of Nicholls. What I think that many people in the trade union movement and many people in the ALP seem to forget is that the globe, the world, is a competitive space. Competition is all around us. We are a trading nation. We export things. We import things. People come here, and people leave us. If we aren't in the global competition game, we lose—and we lose big—because our businesses and our people's living standards go down. For us to be competitive, that means that everyone coming together in understanding that we neither competition. That means the union movement understanding, as they did in the early eighties, that Australia needs to be a competitive space.

In my electorate, obviously there is a lot of construction, but a lot of the construction and a lot of the activity is in agriculture and food manufacturing. We grow almost all of Australia's pears. We grow a large proportion of Australia's apples in the Goulburn Valley. There is a huge dairy industry, and those dairy products go into factories and get turned into infant formula, cheese and yoghurts that are exported overseas. The fruit that isn't sold as fresh fruit goes into a wonderful company called SPC. I've spoken about SPC and the peaches that they produce. I put it to everyone in this place that I'm running a tasting test for the SPC snack packs of peaches and the Chinese imports. It's a blind tasting, and overwhelmingly everyone is preferring the product produced in the Goulburn Valley.

But it costs a lot more to produce the product in the Goulburn Valley, and part of that is because we are not competitive with our overseas competitors, whether they're bringing fruit into this country or whether we're trying to compete overseas. Now, no-one wants us to go down the exploitation path. No-one in the Goulburn Valley wants to. But there needs to be a more level playing field between Australian farmers and manufacturers and their competitors overseas, and the union movement needs to understand that.

This union power has been the theme of the Albanese government, and I think this legislation has been brought forward grudgingly because of the publicity of some of the comments the leader of the CFMEU, John Setka, has made. It harks back to a time when that blokey, bullish culture meant that unions were not saying, 'Let's get Australia competitive and productive,' but: 'Let's try and push everyone around. Let's intimidate. Let's not work collaboratively for Australia's future. Let's try and look after ourselves and no-one else.' Never has that been more seen than in the comments that Setka has made about the AFL and the chief of umpiring.

I have often said I love sport. I love going to sport. I love training with my local footy and netball clubs. We tell our kids not to blame the umpire. We put an umpire in place; don't blame them. It's a given that, across sporting codes, the independent umpires, the referees and the officials are an essential part of the game. You might not agree with their decisions, but, without them, sport has no boundaries, no rules and no order. But I don't believe John Setka and the CFMEU respect the independent umpire. They didn't respect the independent umpire that the coalition put in place, which was the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

The union likes to demand that employers follow the rules, and they even threatened to impose work to rule to have their demands met, but they don't always like the rules applying to them. The former coalition government established the ABCC, which I think was the right thing to do. Some people disagreed with that, but the point is that they established the Australian Building and Construction Commission. In good faith they appointed a gentleman whose name was Stephen McBurney to lead that organisation. That legislation was democratically passed through this place and came into effect. Stephen McBurney, who had umpired over 400 AFL games, including four grand finals, was in good faith appointed leader of that organisation. He did what he was asked to do. He did his job. I think it was important work to try to get productivity back into the construction industry.

But now John Setka is trying to hound him out of any job he might have in the future. That's thuggish behaviour. We can't allow that to pass. That's not the way we should behave in Australia. Stephen McBurney, the respected umpire, did a job in good faith. He got asked by the government to serve his country by heading the ABCC. Now he has moved on to another job, and the union is threatening his new employer for employing him—only for doing his job. That harks back to the themes of antiproductivity and union thuggery, which I don't think should exist in Australia. Would Bill Kelty have done that? Absolutely not. Bill Kelty worked with the Hawke government for the benefit of Australia.

Now we're faced with a piece of legislation which I support but which I think should go further, and I would like to see more ALP members coming in here to support their own piece of legislation and explain to the union movement and explain to Australia why it's important, because that's what we do in this place—we bring our experiences and explain why things are important, otherwise you'd just passed legislation and have no debate. That sometimes happens here, with the guillotines that I've seen going on. But what this legislation seeks to do is say that a union that's incorporated into the CFMEU can demerge if it wishes, and that's the right thing. It's the right thing in this case, and I think we're going to move some amendments that say it should be the right thing to do in a number of other cases.

So this is important. I think this needs to be discussed and debated not only by us—the opposition, who are supporting it—but by the government, who are putting the legislation forward. I think that, if the government did that, they would have the opportunity to come in and say: 'We are the government for all Australians. We're not run by the union movement and we're not going to cower to the union movement, and productivity is an essential if Australia is going to regain its competitive status, which is slipping.' But they're not doing that—they're not coming in here to explain that. I think it's because they're timid. It's disappointing that they're timid, and I encourage them to come in to this place and say: 'If the union movement is on the same page about being a productive Australia, we'll work with them. If they're going to engage in thuggery, we'll be against them.'

I support the legislation. I encourage the government to look at our amendments, which would take it further, but I also encourage the government to come in to this place and speak to the union movement, discuss why you have put this legislation forward and be courageous against the union movement when it's out of line. As I said, I'm not against trade unionism; it's been very important for this country. But, when it gets out of control, then we lose our competitive advantage globally. That's what worries me as a new politician coming in to this place from an electorate where we make things—we still do make things. There's a made-in-Australia bill. Well, we still make things. Let's make those industries competitive.

As I said, I am supportive of the legislation. Make it go further, come in here, say to the union movement, 'We're going to push back against any of your thuggery,' and stick to your lane, ensuring worker safety and competitive wages—very important—but don't get into pushing people around and engaging in the sort of behaviour that Mr Setka has engaged in, in trying to make Australian industry uncompetitive.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a wonderful story told about the greatest man in Australian history, Red Ted Theodore. I did not say that; Malcolm Fraser said that. I did not say that; Paul Keating said that. He is easily the most important person in Australian history, and I would most certainly agree with that statement. When he went down a mine for the third time in his life, where people were going to die and refused to go down—they were told they would be sacked if they didn't go down, so they went down, and another two people died. Theodore himself carried the scars and pain for the rest of his life as a result of what happened in the mine that day. So they formed a union.

The story is told that Ted Theodore and Bill McCormack, his partner in crime, were in the pub, and there was a bloke called Tommy who hadn't taken out a union ticket. Ted said, 'Tommy, you haven't taken out a ticket.' With that, he proceeded to write out the ticket, whether Tommy agreed to it or not. Tommy said, 'You can take your ticket and stick it'—I think you know the rest of that phrase. There are women present, so we won't use the rest of that phrase. Theodore completely ignored him and kept writing out the ticket. McCormack grabbed Tommy by the hair, pulled him back from the bar and smacked him in the mouth. This actually happened. He went straight down, and then Bill kicked him all around the bar-room floor. Then he picked him up by the belt, held him up and said, 'Now, you will take a ticket.' Theodore said, 'Tommy, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble if you had just taken that ticket in the first place.' Tommy said, 'Well you didn't go to the trouble of explaining it to me properly like Bill did.'

That story speaks for itself. If you think that you're going to get union membership in 1900 by asking people and pointing out to them that they're working for nothing and dying down in the mines—one in 30 that went down the mines never came up again; one in 30 that were in the cane fields never came out alive. What, do you think we just keep copping that? If you think you're going to get people enlightened enough and scared of their bosses—if the boss finds out they're taking out a union ticket, they'll get sacked—it's not going to happen. The only way to do this was through violence. If there was some other way of doing it, you can read your history books and come back and explain to me how else it could have been done. Whether it is the same today or not, we will have to argue and disagree.

Setka is under attack. Setka is one of those blokes that doesn't apologise for understanding that a woman has lifted 737 kilos, while a man has lifted 2,422 kilos. There is a difference between men and women. I most certainly would not be prepared to put a woman in to do some of the jobs that I've had to do when I was labouring in the mines. There is a difference. In this place we are not allowed to acknowledge the differences; we've all got to be the same. Go and tell that to the law courts, because in 90 per cent of the cases they will decide that the kids go to the mother. Go and tell the law courts. Go and tell the hospitals. If you can't see that there is a serious difference here, then we have a serious problem in society today.

The much maligned CFMEU—not the Tories, not the Liberal Party, not the National Party; the CFMEU—assailed Jackie Trad. To me, Jackie Trad was the architect of the abortion legislation in Queensland. For those who are happy for 7,000, 8,000 or 9,000 little children to be murdered before they're born, you would think she is a hero. To me she is not, and she will meet her maker with the deaths of tens of thousands of little babies murdered before they were born on her conscience. She sold the railways. The head of the railways was on $365,000 a year. She and he decided to sell the railways. So she sacked 14,000 railway workers; two out of three. Did the Labor Party make a Bo Peep about it? No. Did the unions make a Bo Peep about it? No. The only ones that did anything about her sacking 12,000 Queenslanders were the CFMEU. We had her sacked.

She also sacked about 2½ thousand people in corporatising the electricity industry. Did the ETU do anything about it? No. Speaking as a person that worked with his hands for a fair few years, we have been represented by a group of people that are spineless, cowardly and brainless, but I am proud to say that the CFMEU does not fit into that category. If you think we are going to stand idly by and watch 12 or 15 or 20 deaths a year on construction sites, you've got another think coming, my mate.

The last speaker referred to productivity in fruit and vegetable processing and said that we're competing against the rest of the world. Who are you having a piece of here, mate? Even in the United States, the last time I looked, they were on $5 a day. Obviously people come across the border from Mexico—wetback labour, as they call it. But, all the same, the price was $5 a day. We are on $28.50 an hour. How are we going to compete against the United States, let alone other countries? I'm sorry; it's $5 an hour in the United States. In the Philippines, it's $5 a day. We're on $28.50 an hour, so don't come in here and tell me that we can compete in fruit and vegetables.

When Keating—and he praised the Labor government for this—said that he was removing all protection, I was so angry I threw a boot at the wall. It was six o'clock in the morning. I said, 'Now I'm going to have to spend half my bloody time looking after the workers.' I'd been looking after farmers and small business at that stage. Now I'd have to look after the workers because the ALP wasn't going to do it. If you go to no tariffs and no protection, then you are up against people in China that work for $10 or $20 a day. When you are up against the Philippines or Vietnam or India, where it's $5 a day, how the hell do you think we're going to survive in that environment?

He said, 'Oh, we've got exports.' No, we don't! This country does not export anything now except gas and coal and iron ore. We are not a mining country. Mining is when you dig it out of the ground and sell the metal. We dig it out of the ground and sell the ground. We're a quarrying country. When I say that there are only three things we export, those three are over $100 billion. The next one down might be gold, beef or aluminium. They're about $15 thousand million—$15 thousand million versus the big three at about $110 thousand million or $120 thousand million. So we only have three exports.

Who's responsible for that? Mr Keating is responsible for that. He removed the protection. We have our workers that deserve $28.50 an hour. Believe me, if you are out in the sun picking up a bunch of bananas that weighs 40 kilos and putting it on your back and then carting it 20 or 30 metres to where you put it on the trolley, surely you deserve adequate remuneration for that work. We're very proud in this country to say that we do pay adequate compensation, but none of us are going to have a job unless we combine that with protection. When he made that statement that all protection would be removed, we could either close down industry in Australia or go to slave labour wage levels. There's no in-between. So what we've done is close down industry in Australia.

The previous speaker referred to the fruit and vegetable industry. I'm pleased he raised that, because 45 per cent of our fruit and vegetables now come from overseas. Three years ago, most were coming—obviously, a lot of that depends upon the season. Obviously, mangos can only be produced here in Australia for four or five months of the year. I don't object to stuff coming in to supply the other four or five months of the year, obviously. There will always be some importation, but there is no future for fruit and vegetables in this country unless we have protection. In the banana industry, the so-called farmers party, the National Party—what a joke! It's incredible that Labor destroyed all the jobs in Queensland and that at a federal level it was the National Party, who claim to be the farmers party, that destroyed all of the farming in Australia.

But I'll get back to the heart of what we're discussing today, which is that a large part of the CFMEU, the manufacturing part, is leaving. The manufacturing part is dominated by women. In fact, every executive member that I've met from that part has been a woman. Of course, on the construction side, every person I've met has been a man, and that's fairly predictable, looking at what is required in both of those industries. There is logic in these people leaving, but, at every demonstration or rally I've been in as a very active member of the CFMEU, we chant 'Workers united cannot be defeated.' Well, we're a bit disunited here! But I can see the logic that is behind this. These ladies really don't want to be running around with hard knuckleheaded construction workers who are overwhelming, almost exclusively, male. So there is a lot of logic in what is taking place here, but I do urge all elements of the trade union movement to realise that workers united cannot be defeated, and if we are disunited we are very easily defeated.

For me, I'm sick and tired of a certain union that represents the employers, not the employees. I'm not here to attack that union, but I will say this. I was a member of that union, and we once had an extremely dangerous work situation with something we called the 'shaker'. I had to jump up on one side of the shaker, with a sledgehammer, and hit the shaker to get it moving, because it was stuck. There was a bloke on the other side, and so when I'd hit it I'd jump off, and then he'd hit it and he'd jump off, and then I'd be back hitting it. We were hitting it to get it to start moving, but we had two minutes before our boots caught on fire—only two minutes. I remember that each time you hopped up your boots got hotter and hotter. You had to move at the speed of light, because when the shaker started moving it was coming at you at 60 miles per hour—extremely dangerous.

But it was a simple thing to fix up. I went to the union reps, and they were all on acting staff. How dreadful—every single union rep was on acting staff, and I thought: 'They're not going to look after me; that's for certain. They're going to be looking after their future and their promotion.' So I went and saw the organiser of this union. He came down to the lead smelter, and we had glass at the top—same as we have here—and I saw my boss looking out through the glass at me, because he was pointing me out. He was pointing me out as a troublemaker! I was lucky not to get sacked, but did anything happened about the shaker? Of course nothing happening about the shaker. He wasn't there to protect the employee in the dangerous situation; no, he was there to protect the membership payments from Mount Isa Mines to the union. That was what he was there to protect. It's called site coverage. He was there to protect site coverage; he wasn't there to protect the workers on the site.

So I switched to the CFMEU, and I've been very proud of our reputation for standing up where there are dangerous conditions. We've stood up, and, yes, we got a bad name for doing it, because everyone expects us to work in extremely dangerous situations and expects 10 or 12 of us to get killed every year so you can justify some political stand you want to make.

I've also got to add that the previous speaker said, 'It's damaging our construction industry and our international competitiveness,' but one of the biggest target sites in Australia for high-rise construction is the Gold Coast of Queensland— (Time expired)

Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll be speaking in support of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024. Talking about payments to the ALP instead of the union may have been a Freudian slip by the member for Kennedy, because what we're seeing, and what we're seeing with this piece of legislation, is actually who is controlling the ALP—who is directing them and who has directed them on this issue. In 2020 the coalition passed this exact legislation. The member for Kennedy might call it 'payments to the ALP', but unfortunately they have to go via the unions before they go directly to the ALP. They would like them to go direct to the ALP—from the worker to the ALP—but unfortunately they're using the union as the middleman.

The CFMEU gave them $4.3 million this financial year, and what did it buy them? It bought them the opposition to this legislation in 2020 that allowed amalgamated unions to demerge if they felt it was in their best interests. This was to ensure that the representatives and their members were represented. But in February Labor didn't care about that. They reversed this. Why? Because these were the demands of John Setka and the CFMEU and because the ALP cares more about its union bosses than it does about their workers and their best interests.

What is today really about? Today is an admission from Minister Burke and it's an admission from the Albanese Labor government that they have failed. Today is recognition that the government has failed workers. They've failed the largely feminised industries that the member for Kennedy was talking about—the textile workers union—and they've failed the law-abiding unions. They've failed the good unions, and there are good unions in this country.

This legislation is being brought forward by Labor despite the Albanese government voting against very similar legislation in February. Why did this government vote against this legislation in February? What we've seen from the first two years of the Labor government is that they aren't about people power and they aren't about workers. They're about union power. 'Union power, union power, union power'—this is the chant we hear at every state Labor conference. We don't hear about workers, people, families or individuals. It's about institutionalised unions. This is the motto of the Labor government and its union masters.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Point of order.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member is saying that the unions control the ALP. He's half correct. Just the opposite is true. What he's saying is incorrect. The opposite is true. It is the ALP that controls the unions, unfortunately and sadly.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, member for Kennedy! The member for Cook.

Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All I'm saying is the unions gave $4.3 million dollars—thanks to the member for Kennedy for pointing this out—to the ALP in the last election. They've certainly gotten their money's worth. Let's look at it again. At the end of the day Labor have shown time and time again that they care more about union money than they do about stopping the bullying, thuggery and intimidation in the workplace.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A point of order.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cook will pause. The member for Kennedy, on a point of order. Please state the point of order.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He said that I said that. I said just the opposite of that. I've been misrepresented.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have to state the point of order.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did. He said—

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is your point of order?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My point of order is that he said that I said that the CFMEU was controlled by—

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What is your point of order?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry—that the ALP was controlled by the CFMEU.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's the content of your point of order, but what is your point of order?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He said the exact opposite of what I said.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Kennedy, are you claiming to be misrepresented?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a forum for that, and this is not it, so please resume your seat. The member for Cook has the call.

Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can see why the member for Kennedy is getting confused, because it is very murky. This relationship between unions and the ALP is murky. The Australian people want it exposed. They want to see the transparency. As I was saying, the CFMEU gave $4.3 million to the Albanese government in the lead-up to the last election. What did it get? At the end of the day what it's gotten is the Labor Party's loyalty. They've shown time and time again that they care more about this union money than they do about the worker, than they do about the individual and than they do about stopping the bullying, thuggery and intimidation in the workplace that we are seeing from the CFMEU. This is a humiliating backdown from their previous anti-demerger stance. Minister Burke is now belatedly being forced to admit that they're only acting on this situation because of the attack on the AFL.

If we look at the CFMEU, they're also pushing employers to the wall. Construction businesses are going out of business with record insolvencies. You might ask, 'How can this happen in a housing shortage?' Well, at the behest of these union overlords, Labor has abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission, leaving our construction industry and its more than 400,000 small businesses—many of them in Cook, my electorate—at the complete mercy of the CFMEU. I'm going to talk about the CFMEU and its character in a little bit, but what's got even worse for these businesses going out is that I've just seen that the inflation rate is back up to four per cent. With that inflation rate going back up to four per cent and with the CFMEU being entitled by this Labor Party to run roughshod over these small and medium construction businesses, more are going to go to the wall.

What we're witnessing on full display from the CFMEU is that anyone who stands up to their lawlessness will be persecuted. That is being put on full display with their dogged pursuit of Stephen McBurney in the AFL, a pursuit which, thankfully, is now under investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Why is Labor doing this attack on the AFL? Because it's an attack on the AFL—that's why they're dealing with this issue. It's not because of the difficulty faced by the women in the textiles division of the CFMEU, which has been crushed and is trying to withdraw from the CFMEU. The textile, clothing and footwear sector has the greatest number of women of any division of the CFMEU. But here are some of the union official quotes that these women have had to put up with. This is what the union representatives themselves have said about the workplace culture:

Within the building there were jokes about domestic violence. It was very uncomfortable to the point where our division had to leave the building.

Let's look further at the head of the union and his behaviour. In late 2019, Setka's estranged wife provided a sworn statement to police, detailing a serious incident where Mr Setka had physically assaulted her. She said:

John was out of control. He hit my head against the table about five times. It was very painful. John is a lot bigger and stronger than me and he can totally physically control me. When he loses his temper, there isn't anything I can do but submit to him.

Look at this man.

In February this year, Senator Lambie brought a private senator's bill that would have allowed the manufacturing division, which includes the textile union, to demerge. But what happened when it was this government's turn to speak on this bill? Senator White got up and said, 'The government will not be supporting this bill.' Who knows what Mr Setka was doing behind the scenes to pull the strings to get this to happen? Over the last few weeks, John Setka and the militant CFMEU have shown Australians why the coalition was right to legislate these demerger laws in 2020. The Labor Party have finally been forced to admit their wrongs and bring this legislation back.

Mr Setka has a long history of lawlessness, and the courts have consistently upheld descriptions of him as a complete and utter thug. Despite the member for Kennedy mentioning him in a favourable light, this man is a thug. He's pled guilty in court to harassing women. Simply put, women do not feel safe around John Setka or his CFMEU, and they have good reason not to.

In the last few weeks, Mr Setka has displayed and has shown the attitude that anyone who gets in his way will be run over or have it attempted. Stephen McBurney, who is the head of officiating in the AFL, has umpired over 400 games and, by all descriptions, is a man of honour and repute. What is Mr Setka's issue with McBurney? McBurney was previously the head of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. He was responsible for bringing evidence of the CFMEU's bullying, thuggery and intimidation before the courts, where they were found to have breached the Fair Work Act in 91 per cent of all cases. The CFMEU was fined millions of dollars for breaches of this, and for this Mr Setka is saying that the AFL must sack him. Specifically, Mr Setka has stated: 'We have an obligation to pursue antiunion, antiworker effers like him, and we will until the end of the earth. This is going to cost the AFL a lot of effing money. I hope it's worth it. Projects without our full cooperation are going to be an effing misery for them. They will regret the day they ever employed him.' This is the type of person Mr Setka is.

Let's look at Mr Setka's character in a little more detail. The Age in June 2019, reporting on legal proceedings against Mr Setka, found that police analysis of Mr Setka's phones revealed that he called Anne Gooley:

… 25 times and sent her 45 text messages, calling her a "weak f---en piece of …

bleep—

… and a "treacherous … f---en c---" and a "f---en dog".

This is the man leading this union. The Labor Party is gladly accepting $4.3 million a year from him and repealing legislation that's going to weaken the union. They're now only doing it because they're being bullied into it by what has been shown by the AFL.

Let's look at this man in another judgement. Justice Tracey describes the most disturbing incident, in which CFMEU Secretary John Setka and three thugs shoved a security firm manager, Mr Smith, into a Melbourne alleyway and proceeded to assault him both physically and verbally. The court's decision describes Setka's acts of violence: 'pinned him to the wall', 'hurled abuse at him', 'knocked his helmet from his head' and 'took turns to ram him into the wall'. This is the group donating $4.3 million to Labor. This is the group that Labor repealed our 2020 legislation for. When Mr Smith protested that he was being held against his will, Setka threatened that he would, 'Shut him up permanently.' These are the types of values that the Labor Party is accepting money for. I would request that the Labor Party stop taking donations from Mr Setka and his thuggish union with behaviour like this.

It doesn't stop there. In a separate incident, Setka abused a Grocon worker. He punched the windscreen of the van he was driving, told him to remember his face because he would come after him, and told him that he hoped he would die from cancer. The worker he was talking to was suffering from cancer at the time. Workers who actually wanted to get to work had to be bussed in, given a special path in with the protection of police fencing and given special duties to hide from the verbal assaults hurled at them by the union protesters, calling them scabs, dogs, rats and much worse—things I can't repeat today—and hurling threats including, 'You will die,' 'You're going to cop it,' and, 'I'm going to kill your family.' When police attempted to escort workers onto the site, union crowds blocked and punched their horses, egged on by John Setka, Sean Reardon and Craig Johnston.

Mr Albanese was confronted by a journalist about some of this thuggery. How did he respond when he was confronted by this? I quote: 'Don't question me on it, because it will encourage him.' What a weak and impotent response from the Prime Minister of Australia on a thug. This is a thug who, with his affiliates, donates $4.3 million a year.

In this humiliating backdown from their previous anti-demerger stance, Minister Burke has been forced to admit they're only acting on this situation because of the AFL. He said:

… that attack on the AFL really made the decision clear and made the timing immediate.

You would hope that, from some of the stories I've told today, from some of the quotes I've looked at or from some of the assaults these people have done, there would have been more then enough evidence in February earlier this year when Senator Lambie brought this forward, or, when we were looking at repealing the coalition's bills, to not repeal it. But, for Mr Burke, the attack on the AFL made the decision really clear and made be timing immediate. Wouldn't you think some of those stories, some of those incidents I'm calling out, would have made it more immediate than an attack on the AFL? What we're seeing here is a government that's more worried about the front pages of newspapers and the Channel 7 news than workers rights, actual thuggery or representing female workers in the textiles union.

But it gets better, because Mr Burke went on to say:

We're not going to have a situation where we have members in the manufacturing division compelled to be part of an organisation that they don't want to be part of.

Does Mr Burke not realise that the only reason the manufacturing division couldn't demerge from the militant CFMEU was that he and his government wouldn't let them? If what some of these women are being subjected to weren't such a sad topic, the irony would be delicious. We're taking the Australian people, the women of the textiles union and the rest of the parliament for fools. He's pulling a bill Shorten by going to the CFMEU and saying, 'Don't worry. We won't let the manufacturing division leave,' and then he turned around to the manufacturing division, saying, 'It's terrible and it's unacceptable that you're not allowed to leave.' This is two-way Tony Burke, playing at both sides.

Yes, I support this bill. I wish there were more members of the Labor Party in the chamber opposite standing up to support this bill to stand up to the thuggery. It's great that's taken an incident to illuminate it and I'm grateful to the AFL for illuminating it.

Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I always supported the right for unions to demerge and I support this bill in allowing the manufacturers to be dissociated from the CFMEU. However, I'm unsure why this bill has to be so specific, instead of expanding the provision to allow demergers where members feel appropriate. Unions have an interest in remaining large, but as we've seen in the last few weeks, the size of the unions can actually have a perverse effect unrelated to the core responsibility of the union body. As such, when a significant share of a membership considers it no longer in their interest to be part of union membership—as the manufacturing arm of the CFMEU currently does—I believe they should be allowed to take steps to demerge.

Frankly, I support the coalition's previous legislation that allowed demergers of unions, and I stood against the government's repealing of this legislation. If they hadn't repealed this legislation we would not currently be in this situation where we have to pass this separate legislation. I'm not suggesting that we would see necessarily a lot of demerger activities but we do need to have broad demerger abilities in the union movement in Australia.

The issues that have been illuminated in this case underscore broader concerns that I have with the CFMEU in Australia. I'm genuinely concerned by the powers currently held by the CFMEU and am also concerned that it is an organisation that does not support the broader objectives of its members or the economy. The threats to the AFL, based on the hiring of Stephen McBurney, are absolutely unacceptable. There is no situation where that sort of thuggery and that sort of threat to something that is part of many, many Australian lives should be allowed to take place and that someone should have a leadership of such responsibility and feel so able to throw around power like that.

It comes to the issue—which I think is of great concern to me and many members of my community—of the housing crisis and the building crisis. We actually have a housing crisis, and that is a supply crisis and it is a building crisis, and I am deeply concerned that the last incident is just evidence of how the CFMEU is not working in the interest of the Australian economy and, frankly, Australians in general. Australia is in the midst of a housing crisis. This month we heard that Australia has three capital cities deemed to be impossibly unaffordable. In the past 20 years, house prices have increased by 193 per cent while wages have only grown by 81 per cent, meaning that young people are being locked out of housing.

The polity and certainly the experts agree that the best way to deal with unaffordability of housing in this country is to increase supply, but that is something we are desperately struggling to do and struggling because it is difficult. A significant part of that is about building costs. Given the issues that we have at different levels of government—and I acknowledge those—it is critical that we have confidence in the union movement in charge of delivering the homes of tomorrow because the actions and distractions of the last few weeks really cast that into serious doubt.

When I speak to developers, one of the biggest issues they have in getting housing supply movement going are the costs. Housing development costs have increased by 30 per cent since 2019 and I know construction businesses are doing it tough. ASIC data has shown increased insolvencies this year and they have been led by construction companies—the same companies that we are hoping desperately are going to build the buildings we need. While material costs are higher than pre-COVID, the labour costs are a significant part of this. I literally had someone come up to me the other day who works in the industry who said he is paying $250,000 a year for an engineering graduate with 10 years experience and paying $200,000 for a labourer with absolutely no experience on his sites. We've seen that in the Queensland government with some of the deals that they've done where, again, it's looking like the average wage on some of their sites is now 200 grand. I support every single person in Australia who works hard getting a great wage, but, unless we're getting incredible productivity gains from these extremely high pays, then we are not going to be able to build housing that is affordable for everyday Australians. I think this is an issue that the government absolutely need to face up to, as well as facing up to the issue that they have put a lot of money into public infrastructure, at all levels of government, which is actually crowding out the building of housing, which is what we absolutely need right now.

My expectation of the union movement is for them to work with government, to work with the construction companies and to be constructive around what every Australian needs, which is for us to be able to build the houses and the infrastructure that Australian people live in. I have severe doubts that the CFMEU, with the behaviour of its leadership, is able to play a constructive role in this space. This week shows that the organisation is even failing to serve its own members.

To wrap up: I would like to see the government allow unions to merge and demerge as appropriate. They should never have repealed the coalition's previous legislation, and I support the reintroduction of that legislation rather than dealing with this through ad hoc legislation. I support the call from a previous speaker for the government to no longer accept donations from the CFMEU when it continues to behave in a way that is so unacceptable to the broader Australian community. And I support the reinstatement of the Australian building and construction watchdog, because, frankly, we do need that sort of watchdog in the construction industry, particularly now, when the construction industry is critical to the future prospects and livelihoods of Australians who want desperately to have a home of their own.

Sitting suspended from 13:01 to 16:00

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

There aren't a whole lot of bills that I relish coming in and speaking about in this place, but this is one of them. I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024.

I want you to imagine this scenario: a 19-year-old lad working on a commercial building site in Melbourne in around 1986 or 1987. That young lad was about 70 kilos dripping wet. It was the first day of his apprenticeship. Most people who've worked on building sites would know that the productivity of apprentices in their first year may not be so great, but this was day 1. I was that apprentice. It was my first day on the job of my partnership. I was working on a high-rise construction site in Melbourne. I was sweeping the floor, as any good first-year apprentice would do, and I had two big gorillas come up to me. One of them drove his finger into my chest and said: 'Slow down, Son. Slow down.' I was 19. As I said, I would have been 70 kilos dripping wet, and I was scared out of my wits. Some 35-odd years later I'm really proud to say that I'm glad those two gorillas did what they did, because I probably wouldn't be standing here but for that workplace of intimidation.

Of course, that wasn't executed by members of the CFMEU, because the CFMEU didn't exist back then. That was back in the days of Norm Gallagher's Builders Labourers Federation, back in the bad old days in the 1980s, when people's legs and arms were literally broken. I was absolutely scared out of my mind by these two guys. The fact that these two gentlemen—and I use that term extremely loosely—could (a) assault me as a kid and (b) tell me to slow down because I was sweeping the floor too quickly—give me a break! But that really kicked off my immense dislike for construction unions.

I am not anti-union. I think that the unions have done a lot of good in industrial workplaces in this country and throughout the world. What I am against is union thuggery and union bullying. It really upsets me when I hear members opposite talking about the importance of safe workplaces and not having an environment where people feel like they are threatened at work, yet the Labor Party continue to take $4½ million a year from the CFMEU for their election campaigns. That's what really upsets me.

I'm not anti-union. I'm absolutely not anti-union. In fact, believe it or not, I actually used to be a member of a union. I couldn't get my carpentry apprenticeship unless I joined the Builders Labourers Federation. Can you believe that? I couldn't get my apprenticeship. Back in the eighties there were signs up on every building site in cities across the country, and do you know what they said? They said 'no ticket, no start', which meant, if you weren't a card-carrying member of the BLF, you couldn't work on that site. And John Howard, to his credit, brought in rules of freedom of association. That event, back when I was a kid, irrevocably shaped who I am today. It angered me so much that I wanted to—people say, 'How did you start off in public life?' or, 'What made you go into politics?' There were lots of things, but that was one of them. I don't want to live in a country where gorillas, goons, can drive their fingers into people's chests, kids' chests, and threaten them because they're working too hard, they're pushing a broom too fast.

I'm really glad the member for Kennedy is in here, and it's a shame he wasn't in here earlier; he could have heard my earlier remarks about the CFMEU. But the Labor Party had an opportunity to accept a bill that we put in place back in 2020 to give certain unions the ability to demerge from other unions if they felt that they no longer shared the ethos of the unions that they were involved with. That bill was passed in 2020, when we were in government, and Labor reversed those laws in February of this year. Why? Because John Setka didn't like it. There was no other reason. It was that John Setka didn't like it.

The textile clothing and footwear sector, which has the greatest number of women members, faces significant issues within the CFMEU. With the toxic, male dominated culture that I've seen on building sites my entire life, it should not come as any great surprise that a union whose membership is heavily dominated by women wouldn't support the sort of rubbish that we have seen be perpetrated by the CFMEU. So they wanted to demerge and get out of the CFMEU. Everybody, it seems, wants to leave the CFMEU. Back in 2020—

That's because they look after you, Bob. Back in 2020 it was the maritime workers who wanted to demerge from the CFMEU. The way the CFMEU are going, they're going to have to change their name to the 'C' because no-one wants to be a part of them! No other industry, no other union, wants to be a part of the CFMEU, because of the appalling conduct. Here's another miner—

Here's one of them who don't want to be a part of the CFMEU, because of the appalling conduct of people like John Setka. But the Labor Party have now had an epiphany, just in the last couple of weeks. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, you might be thinking, 'What is this epiphany?' The epiphany is that the member for Watson has finally come to his senses and realised that the coalition actually had it right back in 2020. Unions should have the ability to demerge from other unions if they feel it's in their best interests. But this come-to-Jesus moment, this road to Damascus, only happened after John Setka effectively tried to hold the country to ransom when he took on the AFL. The AFL seems to have more power and more sway than just about any other organisation in this country.

I want to declare a conflict of interest at this point. The member for Watson had this road-to-Damascus moment because John Setka came out and said publicly that he wanted to take on Stephen McBurney. He said things like: 'I think it will have implications for the AFL right across Australia. We have an obligation to pursue antiunion, antiworker expletives like him, and we will until the end of the earth.' And there are a whole range of things. He threatened the Australian government and the Australian taxpayers with, effectively, economic coercion and with stopping jobs, or certainly slowing them down, if the AFL didn't sack Stephen McBurney.

Where's my conflict of interest? I went to school with Stephen McBurney at St Bede's College in Mentone. We were in the same year. He's not a mate of mine. I don't dislike him, but he wasn't a friend of mine. But I went to school with him, and he has been a really faithful servant of the AFL. He acted as the AFL chief umpire, and now, after his term as the Australian Building and Construction Commission head, he's got his job back. Why has he got his job back? Because the Labor Party abolished the ABCC.

What we're seeing here today is the reason why we needed the ABCC in the first place: for people like John Setka and the thugs. Not everybody in the CFMEU are thugs, certainly, but the leadership of the CFMEU have proven time and time again to be. The Federal Court, time and time again, have said that this CFMEU is the most recidivist union organisation in Australia. It continues to cop fines imposed by the Federal Court, and the CFMEU treats those fines as the cost of doing business. It's just the cost of doing business. It wasn't until laws were passed that enabled the Federal Court to impose fines personally upon officials of the CFMEU that they actually started to sit up and take a little bit of notice.

Stephen McBurney, who is otherwise a good man, was doing his job as a public servant and running the Australian Building and Construction Commission, but, in doing so, he was effectively the policeman, effectively the police commissioner, and he brought prosecutions against the CFMEU. John Setka went after him and forbade the AFL from employing him. If the AFL didn't take the warning from the CFMEU, then all AFL job sites would just grind to a halt because this is what the CFMEU do. This is their modus operandi. 'If you don't join the union'—I know from my personal history—'we're going to black ban you. We're going to black ban you not just on this site but on every other site in this country until we bring you to your knees!' That is the way the CFMEU operate. And they try to use the same intimidation tactics they use on every single other building site in this country every day of this calendar year and in years past. That's what they tried to do with the AFL. And now the member for Watson has this epiphany. 'Oh, this is terrible. We should allow those smaller unions to de-merge.'

Shame on the member for Watson. Shame on every single member in this House who receives a benefit from the CFMEU in financial means to their campaigns or to the head campaign. Shame on them for taking that blood money, because blood money is exactly what it is. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I don't want to be difficult. I was speaking on this. I was informed that the debate was interrupted and I would be allowed to complete my speech, so I'm just getting up to complete my speech.

I said at the start of the speech that I was a member of another union, and we had a very dangerous situation at the Mount Isa Mines. I had to stand on a flue and swing a sledgehammer at a piece of machinery called a shaker. It was frozen, and we had to unfreeze it, so I had to hit it and jump off because the heat was such that my boots would catch on fire if I was there for any more than a minute or two. Once the shaker began to move, it would come at me at 60 kilometres an hour. On the other side of the flue was another bloke with a sledgehammer, so he'd hit it and then I'd jump up and hit it. We were hoping to get it moving. Anyway, it was extremely dangerous. I couldn't speak to any of the representatives of my union, because they were all staff. They hadn't quite been appointed, but they were temporarily on staff. You can't complain to a staff member about shortcomings of staff!

So I went down to see the organiser. As I said before, he turned up at my place of work. Like here, there was glass up there, and my boss was behind the glass. He was pointing me out to my boss—obviously, me as a troublemaker. Did he address the issue of the extremely dangerous shaker? No. I asked my boss in the control room, 'Did he take up your shaker?' 'No. Why would he do that? There's nothing wrong with the shaker.' 'Well, you go down and wield the sledgehammer, mate, if you think there's nothing wrong with it!' So I left that union, joined the CFMEU and remained a proud member of that union until this very day. You could say we're excessive at times. Yes. I wouldn't deny that for a moment. Put your hand up here, any member of parliament who is perfect in their conduct as a member of parliament. I'll track you down and I'll soon prove whether you're a good member of parliament or not. Yes, we've most certainly had our shortcomings. We're a very aggressive union and we make no apologies to anyone for that. Australia is averaging about a dozen deaths on construction sites each year. We're trying desperately to eliminate those deaths on construction sites. And, if we're a bit aggressive to people who will not take out a ticket—we do the work, and they bludge off us. I don't think that's very fair. We should do the work to get decent pay and conditions.

There is a union called the coalminers union. I'm really interested in the coalminers union, because it was led by a very good friend of mine, who put the biggest union in Australia together. At his valete speech, Bob Hawke and Neville Wran gave speeches. It was a very high-flying evening. He is a very great man, John Maitland. The head of the coal division, who was double-degreed from a university, stabbed him in the back and put him in jail, when he was totally innocent—and of course the appeals court found him totally innocent, and he was released. But, in the meantime, this fellow had taken over the miners union. As far as I'm concerned, he's never been near a mine in his life. He came out of university with two degrees, stabbed John Maitland in the back, took over the union and then took the coalminers out of the CFMEU because we didn't make him federal secretary. Well, I'd spit on him before I'd make him federal secretary of our union.

I came out of the Bjelke-Petersen government, the only government in Australia that stood up to union thuggery. I made no apologies to the ETU. You turned off the lights and you wouldn't switch them back on until you got the absolutely outrageous outcome that you wanted. So you switched the lights off. The only way we had to switch the lights back on was to bring in contractors. I pleaded with you. The Leader of the Liberal Party was an ex-ETU official who had become a doctor. He pleaded with them to go back to work. Johnny Maitland, the head of the coalminers union of Queensland, pleaded with them to go back to work, because they were playing into the hands of Bjelke-Petersen, who was just looking for an excuse to bash them up—and they gave him the excuse. I won't hesitate to say that our behaviour was excessive, as a government. I'm not proud to admit that, but the truth is that it was.

This issue has arisen because Setka has a different attitude towards women in the workplace. I'm not going to deny that for a moment. But a woman, in all of human history, has lifted 737 kilos. A man has lifted 2,422 kilos. It might come as a surprise to people in this place, but they're different, and Setka is one of those blokes who is conscious of the difference. If you want to go onto a construction site, you want to be able to swing by one hand 20 stories above the ground and not feel scared when you're doing it, and you want to be able to take weights that most people wouldn't be able to lift and do that 20 foot up on a steel beam. So please excuse me for saying some words in defence of Setka. This bloke was in the authority that was appointed to bash up and destroy our union, so please excuse me for saying that Setka might be a bit upset about that. And then he gets put in one of the most lucrative and most looked-up-to positions in this country, with the AFL. Well, please excuse me for complaining about it.

Let me go back to the coalminers union. We are now not in the CFMEU. We are in the coalminers union. Wages in Queensland have been driven down from $185,000 a year to $135,000 a year, for those of us who can get jobs—because we're supporting an ALP that wants the coal industry closed down. They've said it again and again and again. Well, I'll tell you something: it was the CFMEU that sacked Jackie Trad for screaming against the coalminers. It was the head of the CFMEU—not the coal division but the construction division. The coal division never said anything against her at all. She was just allowed to keep screaming that we wanted to close the coal industry down, and she was the deputy leader of the party in Queensland. Well, please excuse me for getting a little bit upset as a CFMEU member. At one time, we had the coalminers and we were going to fight for the coalminers. Since they left, our wages had gone down from $185,000 a year to $135,000 a year. So be it. You're going your own way? I wish you well, son. And the leadership of your coalminers union are a bunch of greenies.

Let me move on. The Liberals say, 'You get money from them.' Yes, in our first election we got money from them and from the ETU in Victoria. In the last nearly 20 years, we haven't got a cent off of them. Not only that, three of them handed out how-to-vote cards against me in my major booth in Mareeba. They had CFMEU shirts on. Alright, these people are entitled to their viewpoint, and the CFMEU actually works against our party, so I'll put that on record. If you think we're getting any money for what we're doing—no, it's what we believe is the right thing to do. So that's not why we're doing it. We're not getting any support from them whatsoever, to my knowledge.

The last speaker said, 'It is damaging us internationally—the tremendously high demands upon our industry.' Well, hold on, you're talking about the construction industry. Then he started talking about food processing, but the CFMEU has no coverage on food processing. You chose to pick the construction industry. The biggest and most important economic go-forward in Australia is construction on the Gold Coast, and you can go to any site, and the CFMEU flags are flying high. The most forward and aggressive economic go-forward in Australia is construction on the Gold Coast, and we're in charge of all those sites. So I'll say to the previous speaker: before you shoot your mouth off in this place, you better hope that the mob on the other side is stupid because someone might just hear what you're saying and answer it.

I didn't say that the CFMEU was in charge of construction on the Gold Coast. I didn't say that. The Liberal Party said that we're destroying industry in Australia. The only industry we've got going forward in this country is construction on the Gold Coast. I defy any member in this place to point out to me, apart from little, tiny things, anything that's going forward in this country. Everyone knows everything's going backwards; we're all aware of that. Unfortunately for him, he picked food processing. He said it's going forward wonderfully well, in spite of these people. Firstly, they've got nothing to do with the industry. The levels of fruit and vegetables imports are not going up; they're going down. Forty-five per cent of our fruit and vegetables now come from overseas. It's quite extraordinary for the most agriculturally well-suited country on earth that we get 45 per cent of our fruit and vegetables from overseas.

A few years ago, we were actually importing more fruit and vegetables than we were exporting. It goes backwards and forwards. I'm quite sure that, in the next few years, we'll be importing more fruit and vegetables than we export. Our country can't feed itself—that's a lovely state of affairs, isn't it? That's not the fault of the CFMEU. We are in construction. The one industry in Australia that is going like a house on fire is construction, and it's construction on a big scale where all the sites are CFMEU. So don't tell me we're restricting, because we're the only industry that's going forward. We're not restricting it. I can't say we're facilitating it, but we're most certainly the people doing the work on the site.

I'm very proud to say that our party has four members of parliament—and please, God, after selection we might have seven or eight to balance the power in Queensland. But every one of our members of parliament has dirt under his fingernails, and my honourable colleague on my left here has dirt under his fingernails. He's one of the last of the Mohicans! Who has in the Labor Party? They've never been near a job where they use their hands in their lives! But we've still got one left, and God bless him for being here.

When we have a candidate, we really want to have a look at him. We're very strong on Christian values. We believe—and you don't have to believe in the good Lord to be in our party, but we sure like to look at whether you agree with the teachings of a bloke called Jesus Christ: you're supposed to love your fellow man, look after him and make the world a better place. That's a very simple message. And we like to make sure, when we interview people, that they have that same viewpoint and are comfortable with that viewpoint.

I refer to Paul Keating—and, you know, it's rather ironic that the agricultural industry was destroyed by the National Party, not by the Labor Party or the Liberal Party; every industry was deregulated by the National Party—and to bananas. Behind the National Party leader's back, he'd already given the import licence for bananas to come in from a country where they paid $5 a day in wages when we paid $28.50 an hour in Australia. I remember it vividly. I had the ABC on—once upon a time I used to listen to the ABC—at six o'clock in the morning, as I got out of bed, and Keating announced that this would be the freest country on earth: 'We are abolishing all tariffs, all subsidies—all gone.' Well, that was a good idea, Paul! The average support level on earth was 42 per cent. So farmers in other countries were getting 42 per cent of their income from their government. Thanks to Keating, we reduced it to four per cent. So we were running a 100 metre race and giving our competitors a 42 metre start. My reaction to his statement was to pick up my boot and throw it at the wall and use some language that my mother told me she'd kill me if she ever heard me saying. And I said: 'What does this bloke mean? Are we going to go down to slave-labour wage levels, or are we going to close down every industry in Australia?'

Well, we closed down the motor vehicle industry. We closed down the fuel industry. Ninety-seven per cent of Australia's fuel was being produced here in Australia. Last year we imported $48,000 million worth of fuel; our total exports were $500 billion; but one 10th of our entire exports was going overseas to buy fuel. That has been the outcome of the free-market policies of the ALP and the LNP. (Time expired)

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

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

Question unresolved.

As it is necessary to resolve this question to enable further questions to be considered in relation to this bill, in accordance with standing order 195 the bill will be returned to the House for further consideration.