Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on a threat to the union movement’s ability to look after the jobs of its members. Once that threat was communism; today it comes from an extreme greens agenda. Union leaders are joining forces with extreme greens policy. We saw it on the ETS and now we are seeing it on the mining tax. Union leaders, perhaps with an eye to Labor preselections in the future, are putting extreme greens policy first and their members’ jobs last. For example, union members’ dues are funding extreme policy reports that would undermine members’ jobs. The ACTU and the Australian Conservation Foundation, ACF, produced a report in May that calls for a 50 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 at a cost to the economy of nearly half a trillion dollars in extra investment.

Senator Sherry, you would be alarmed, as deputy person in charge of the purse strings, that the ACTU and the ACF have put out a paper calling for half a trillion dollars in expenditure to reduce emissions by 50 per cent. Do union members know that their hard-earned money is going towards this extreme greens agenda? How much union money went towards paying for this report? Why aren’t union leaders standing up for their members instead of selling them out for greens’ fantasies? Earlier this year I listened to Senator Milne debating the renewable energy amendment bill. She said, ‘We should be aiming to have 100 per cent renewable energy as fast as we can.’ That is a totally irresponsible call. If implemented, it would send household and business power bills through the roof, whether covered with solar panels or not.

Complementary policies for greenhouse gas emission abatement and their national and regional employment consequences is a report for the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Council of Trade Unions prepared by the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research. The ACTU and ACF report recommends wonderful proven policies such as incentives for ceiling insulation. We know how that ended up—in tears. In order to pay the half trillion investment cost, the report says that:

Investment can only be resourced from savings, which can only be increased by consuming less.

That means:

… immediately-pleasing expenditures must be foregone: in the business case, profit distributions; in the government case, current services for the people; in the household case, current spending on consumption goods and services.

I am quoting from the report that, Senator Sherry, your union fees would have helped pay for.

In the report, the ACTU advocates that:

… an incomes policy is agreed between the major stakeholder groups in the Australian economy via tax/wage, tax/superannuation or wage pause agreements to limit the inflationary consequences of the aggressive CO2 reduction strategy …

Do union members know that the ACTU wants to freeze their wages to fund emissions reduction? Have they held meetings with their members to discuss this? How did the plan go down? I bet no-one on the factory floor or in the mills or the mines knows anything about this deal on wage freezes to fund emissions reductions. Union leaders are treating their worker-members like mushrooms. I bet there were no items on the shop stewards’ agenda to discuss with workers which government services should be cut or how every member will be forced to cut down their consumption of goods and services. No, the shop stewards would not even know themselves. The sell-out of their members’ jobs has been done at the highest level by union leaders.

The ACTU-ACF report concludes that:

… the ratio of household debt to gross disposable income will stabilise at around 200 per cent—a very high ratio by historic standards.

The union leadership of Australia have seriously promoted such a state of affairs. Why have they not been held accountable and asked to defend such an unsustainable position? The ACTU report says that:

An important potential means of reducing emissions would be to switch production from the current mix of goods and services towards education and health services, both of which are low-emission.

Effectively they are saying, ‘Out with mining, out with manufacturing.’ Union leaders have sold out their workers in those industries. Perhaps that is why they have fallen for the 40 per cent mining supertax, because, for them, mining was on the way out anyway.

Then they want to increase public spending on top of all that. The report says:

To maintain the targeted GDP growth rate, public sector spending will have to increase. That is, the public sector will have to go into sustained deficit—

I am quoting from the report, Senator Sherry. I know it is embarrassing, and I know you would like to leave. I know this is tremendously embarrassing to you.