Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I notice that Senator Cash is already on her high horse. I am sure she will get out her membership of the HR Nicholls Society and start flashing that around to us at any moment now.

Registered organisations include unions and employer associations, and the Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Committee, of which I am chair, heard from both in an inquiry which we conducted last Friday. While, ideally, the committee would always like more time to deal with any piece of legislation that comes before the committee, the Senate as usual was up to the challenge; the committee was up to the challenge. We heard from a number of witnesses, some called by the opposition and some called by the government, and we were able to analyse this bill and its effect. We heard from a good cross-section of the community, and I will go to some of those submissions in a minute. All the submissions to the inquiry expressed in principle support for increased accountability for registered organisations and their office holders. It is worth noting at this point in time that these rules, these regulations, these laws that apply to registered organisations are in fact laws that were put in place by Mr Tony Abbott when he was minister for industrial relations in the previous government. This is the first time that these laws that were originally introduced by Mr Abbott have been updated. They are being updated because of some obvious circumstances, which I will go into in a moment, which have undermined confidence in the ability of those laws to deal with governance issues in some registered organisations, and that is a shame.

The people who made representations about the bill included, for instance, the Australian Industry Group, which represents employers. They expressed support for the bill, agreeing on the importance of greater disclosure by registered organisations. The Australian Council of Trade Unions expressed their support for the bill and its measures to address issues arising from the recent investigation into the Health Services Union branches. This is important. The Australian Industry Group is itself a registered organisation that represents other registered organisations. The ACTU is not a registered organisation but is a peak body that represents registered organisations under federal laws and various state laws.

It is no secret that public confidence in registered organisations has recently been undermined by the actions of a small number of officials in some parts of the HSU. We do not want to go into the proposition that Senator Abetz puts to us that the Senate should decide the guilt or otherwise of individuals involved in that. That will ultimately be a matter for the courts in various jurisdictions, and that should happen and take its proper course. But what it has highlighted is that there are serious governance issues with that union that clearly need to be addressed. Again, instead of the opposition attacking this government for actually doing something about it, they should be commending this government for acting quickly and appropriately to address some of those issues.

I was very pleased to hear the testimony of the Assistant Secretary of the ACTU, Mr Tim Lyons. Mr Lyons's view was that the package of measures contained in the bill will collectively address the underlying failings that became apparent during the recent investigation by Fair Work Australia. Certainly as a union member and a passionate believer in the role that unions play, there is no-one who feels more strongly than me that the overwhelmingly professional and honourable work of registered organisations should not be tainted by the actions of a few. It is in that spirit that I support this bill absolutely. I do not think that there are any issues with the vast majority of unions or other registered organisations such as employer organisations in raising the standards of governance and disclosure. I think that is proper and appropriate. There is a tripling of the current fines that, as I indicated, were put in place firstly some time ago when Mr Abbott was industrial relations minister in the previous Howard government. There are now much more rigorous disclosure provisions. All these things are very important.

The bill also enables Fair Work Australia to behave the way I think we would like them to be able to behave. Senator Abetz talks about Stuart Wood's advice that Fair Work Australia were able to directly disclose to the policing authorities matters contained in their investigation. Of course, whenever there are legal disputes, half of the advice is always wrong. When you have two legal opinions and they are contradictory opinions, one is going to be right and one is going to be wrong. Fair Work Australia had advice to say that they could not do that directly. Ultimately they did achieve that result by going through the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, so the report and all the supporting documentation has in fact been provided to the police authorities in both New South Wales and Victoria. It did get there, but the problem we had is that Fair Work Australia felt constrained by their legislation in that they were not able to do that directly.

In part, the position is supported by Mr John Lloyd, who was the former Commissioner of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. At the hearing where Mr John Lloyd appeared, and I will talk about his submission in more detail later, he indicated that the act that governed his commissionership—the Australian building improvement act, I think it was called—specifically allowed for him as Commissioner of the ABCC to hand over investigative material and evidence to the police forces in the relevant states. So in many ways the fact that there were specific provisions in that bill to allow for that disclosure probably supports Fair Work Australia's position. But, again, I am not a lawyer—thank heavens, most people would say—and I do not want to get into which lawyer was right in the opinion that they gave. What is important is that the government has moved to clarify the situation to ensure that Fair Work Australia can provide any evidence it collects to the police. Again, that is something the opposition want to criticise, but when we go and do it they criticise us for doing it too. It seems you cannot win with this opposition. You are dammed if you do and you are dammed if you don't.

This issue itself was the subject of a further Senate estimates hearing and Senator Abetz talked about the fact that Mr Doug Williams had said in a memo that there should be an ability to provide some information arising from the investigation to the police. This was portrayed by Senator Abetz and others through the press as a 'smoking gun'. As chair of that committee in estimates, I recalled Fair Work Australia at the request of the opposition to answer more questions about that detail. The smoking gun turned into an empty water pistol. That is all it was. There was no smoke; there was no gun. It was an absolute fizzer. There were three hours of questioning about the smoking gun, as it was portrayed, and it was an absolute fizzle. When the officers were asked about that issue, they answered the questions and left the opposition absolutely flat-footed and with hollow accusations that went nowhere. Senator Abetz now complains, 'Why didn't the press follow that matter and other matters more fully?' It is because the press were watching too and they saw it was a no smoking gun. It was a complete beat-up. The officers acted appropriately in every instance and that was obvious to everyone who was watching the committee. It is important to understand that Senator Abetz wants to argue, as other people who submitted to the committee argued, that registered organisations should be treated the same way as corporations. It has to be understood that these are constitutional matters—again, reminding people I am not a lawyer; I will not give constitutional advice about trading corporations. Even some of the people on the other side will understand that registered organisations are very different to corporations that trade for profit. Unions are organisations that exist to serve their members.