Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This is an important debate. It is good that speakers from all sides can reflect on the role of trade unions in our society. May I begin by saying that there is no-one in the coalition who says that trade unions should not exist. This is not a debate about whether unions should or should not exist. This is not a debate about freedom of association. This is not a debate about governments taking action to rub out an important component of civil society. We all recognise the role that unions can play in society. But it is one thing to recognise the contribution of unions, one thing to say that they have an important role to play in our civil society, and it is another to ask: 'Do they have too much power, and is part of that power exercised by their ownership of one of the great political parties of Australia, the Australian Labor Party?' That is what we are talking about here. We are talking about who calls the shots, ultimately, in the Australian Labor Party.

We saw no better evidence of that on that night in June 2010, when a sitting Prime Minister was bundled out of office, overnight. He was basically persuaded that he did not have the numbers in caucus the next morning; he had to go. He did not put up a fight in the end. He saw that the numbers were against him and he went. That was the night when the faceless men—they were all men that time—were identified as the people who coordinated and put together the plot. Those faceless men: David Feeney, Don Farrell and Bill Shorten—before he was a superstar. These are people who have several things in common. They are members of the Labor Party and formerly members of the trade union movement in some form or another.

We had the spectacle that night of a member of a very senior union in Australia, the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes—that shy and retiring Paul Howes, who shuns the media spotlight, who is afraid of the camera; he runs from the camera and the spotlight!—getting on national television to give a running commentary on what they had done to a sitting Prime Minister. The announcement was not even being made by a member of parliament. It was being made by a sitting trade union official: 'Oh, gee, oh, shucks, I've got an announcement to make: we've just removed or are in the process of removing a Prime Minister.' The gall! The Liberal Party did not have to do anything except sit back and watch as the trade union movement ordained, for whatever reason, that Kevin Rudd had to go. The order went out, and Rudd went.

One of the things that was not in Rudd's favour is that from time to time he had had the temerity to speak out against the unions. He had had the temerity to talk about how the Labor Party was meant to be a broader based, more representative organisation. He had the temerity to do that. In 2007, he showed that temerity by watering down the even more extreme proposal that Julia Gillard, the then shadow minister, I think, for employment and workplace relations, was bringing forward to unwind the coalition's Work Choices legislation. The first draft of the Fair Work amendments, as drafted by Julia Gillard, were even more extreme than the version which finally saw the light of day as Labor Party policy in the run-up to the 2007 general election. It was watered down by Kevin Rudd.

It was watered down by Kevin Rudd because Mr Rudd could see the damage that would be done to the image of the Australian Labor Party if the public were to see how much the parliamentary party appeared to be in the pocket of the trade unions. We know that they have to be in the pocket of the trade unions. They are owned: lock, stock and barrel. There are so many members of the Labor Party in this place—almost all of them—who owe being here to the union movement. They therefore have an obligation—a filial obligation, if you like—to defend the union movement to the last, and this creates a lens that they put on any piece of legislation which comes before us; a lens which has a very heavy trade union bias. That is why it is always a furphy when people say only 13 per cent of the private sector is unionised—yes, but through the union movement that is in control of the Labor Party they exert a disproportionate influence over the legislation and policy of the country. That is the point. The only thing ultimately that stops the Labor Party from doing more extreme things in favour of the unions is the potential for a public opinion backlash.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd watered down the Fair Work Act. We can imagine how more extreme it would have been if Julia Gillard had had her way in. Julia Gillard came to the prime ministership owing her position to those faceless men and to the trade unions behind them. So often during her prime ministership we have seen that she has had to genuflect to those unions because of how she owes her position to them.

When she came back from overseas and found that the redoubtable, long-suffering, beleaguered Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Bowen, had put together the first enterprise mining agreement involving Roy Hill Mine, owned by Gina Rinehart, she feigned surprise that this had happened. When the unions got in touch with her, they said, 'We've got a problem with this.' All of a sudden she turned around, dropped Bowen like hot coals and said: 'We've got to have a proper review of this. We've got to have a jobs board. We've got to do this and we've got to do that.'

This was the case of a policy which had been carefully put together over 12 months, coming to fruition in this first enterprise mining agreement, suddenly being brought to a halt and requiring a further review because of a union backlash. That is not good for the culture of good government in Australia that there can be that sort of backlash and that sort of quick backtracking by a Prime Minister. We hope to be administering the biggest resources boom in Australia's history and we need to be putting in place a consistent, credible policy regime that will stand the test of time and which will be coherent. We cannot have a situation where unions can stop a whole process that has been going for 12 months if they find something wrong with a particular agreement. That is where good government comes up against the institutional ownership of the Labor Party by the labour movement.

There are many here who will recall the Cole royal commission into the building industry—something fiercely opposed by many on the other side. Senator Marshall, who spoke before me, formerly an official of the ETU, in his maiden speech to the parliament attacked the Cole royal commission and said it was a 'politically motivated witch-hunt' that was 'desperately trying to uncover non-existent union corruption in the building industry.' Further, he praised the Electrical Trade Union and 'its many fine members who I had pleasure to work with during my tenure there.' Yet this commission catalogued over 100 types of unlawful and inappropriate conduct, including by the ETU. As a result of that the Australian building and construction commission was established as a tough cop on the beat to take a strong stand against union thuggery in the building and construction industry. The Office of the ABCC had helped the building and construction industry to increase productivity by 10 per cent and provided an annual economic welfare gain of something like $6.2 billion, reduced inflation by 1.2 per cent and increased GDP by 1.5 per cent. The number of working days lost annually per thousand employees in the construction industry fell from 224 in 2004 to 24 in 2006. At the same time, building costs fell by 20 to 25 per cent and long project delays were dramatically reduced.

What did the Labor government do? In 2007, they promised, under employer pressure, to keep the Building and Construction Commission. But three or four years later, safe from that 2007 election, they watered down the building and construction commission—they defanged it. What has been the result? You only have to go to the Grocon site in the middle of Melbourne to see the result—the upsurge in days lost in the construction industry and the sort of lawlessness that is returning to the construction sector. Governments, apart from anything else, must uphold the law. They must not be seen to be turning a blind eye to the law. Construction is a sector where that is happening and that is not in the interests of good government.

Senator Marshall talked about the importance of consultation. He talked about how good government is about consultation. Yes, he is right. As part of that consultation, trade unions and stakeholders on many important matters should be consulted. But this government has a track record of not understanding what genuine consultation is about. We saw that with the mining tax, where they mugged an industry overnight with a punitive tax which was actually designed to extract more revenue than the government had estimated at the time. This was only realised when the mining industry finally got a look at it. They were mugged and essentially told, 'Take it or leave it. The numbers are baked into the budget.' Was that appropriate consultation with an industry? Is that the model of consultation that they want?

Contrast that with the consultation that has occurred recently with the trade union movement where we have seen a new shipping reform program put through which offers all sorts of concessions to the shipping industry to help preserve shipping industry jobs, because we are fundamentally uncompetitive in that sector. In return, allegedly, the Maritime Union of Australia have pledged a new productivity compact with the shipowners. We are still to see that productivity compact or any of its content. The reason the 1997-98 maritime dispute occurred is that a lot of people in Australia had had enough—shippers, customers of the shipping lines and customers of the ports. Our wharves were a laughing stock. Our crane rates were amongst the lowest in the world, if you measured wharf productivity that way. People say that what happened on the waterfront was pretty rough. But what had been happening on the waterfront for years with all the rorts was pretty rough.

We can go back to the early seventies, we can go back to the painters and dockers, we can go through the whole history of the wharves, but the fact of the matter is that from a history in the thirties of protecting workers from very bad conditions on the wharves the MUA by the eighties and nineties had mutated into this body that was holding Australian exports to ransom. That is why the Howard government took action. Admittedly it was tough action, but things had reached a point where consensus was not achieving anything. Bob Hawke had tried consensus when he was Prime Minister, and it had not worked on the wharves. Sometimes a government has to stand up and say, 'The government runs the country, not any one sectional interest.' If there is one boast I make proudly, as a member of the opposition and particularly as a member of the Liberal Party, it is that we have no institutional owners. We are not owned by anybody.

Senator Thorp interjecting—

Yes, we have links with business, Senator Thorp, with big business and with small business. We have links with the middle class. We have links with aspiring working-class Australians. We have links with people who have made it in Australia. We have links all over the place. We are not owned by anybody. There are no bloc votes at our national conferences.