Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What an abrogation of the democratic principles that this Senate should stand up for. We have heard here today from all the other components except the Greens. On the opposite side, we have heard a tirade of mock offence at an inquiry being held and information coming forward which would lift the lid on a secretive organisation which has a lot to be inquired into. On this side, from both the Democrats and the Labor Party, there has been extraordinary weakness. They have simply not been able, on this occasion, to rise to the challenge to put the spotlight onto an organisation which is an invidious one in our community.

Let me dispense first with this idea about a register of workplaces. Let me read from the Financial Review what the Exclusive Brethren and other sects managed to get:

Call it the Exclusive Brethren clause. Buried in hundreds of pages of new federal workplace laws, that came into effect last week, is a change allowing employers who are members of the Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian sect, to keep trade union officials out of their workplaces. The amendments to the Workplace Relations Act provisions on rights of union organisers to enter workplaces will make it easier for Brethren employers to get a special certificate exempting them, on the grounds of their religious doctrine, from the right of entry regime regardless of the views of their employees.

Should workers not know, when they are going to a place, that it has a special exemption under this government’s regulations? The question here is: how come they are getting a special exemption? Did it just happen in the stilly night? Of course it did not. It happened because the Exclusive Brethren were in there lobbying this government and this government agreed to it—to ban union officials from their workplaces, to leave the employees of their workplaces open to an invidious, second-class situation of being denied the workplace protection that everybody else has. That is the sort of thing you see—the quid pro quo coming back from the support the Exclusive Brethren is giving to the government of the day.