George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I listened to the contribution of Senator Ursula Stephens in this matter of public importance debate. I always think Senator Ursula Stephens's contributions are well worth listening to because Senator Stephens is one of the Labor Party's most talented senators. Why she languishes on the back bench when frontbench Labor senators of much more modest competence and ability occupy positions in the executive government under Julia Gillard remains one of the mysteries of the age. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the honeyed words I heard from Senator Ursula Stephens about the imposition of stricter governance standards on registered organisations in this period of Labor government, the reverse is true.

The history of this Labor government has been the history of a government bound hand and foot to the trade union movement, absorbed entirely and sunk in the culture of the trade union movement and, because of the political debts the members of its parliamentary wing have to the trade union preselectors, unable to deal effectively with the problem of corruption in the trade union movement. We have seen time beyond number in this and the previous parliament, but particularly in this parliament, debate about and exposure of the endemic culture of corruption in areas of the trade union movement. In the Health Services Union, there is the involvement of the member for Dobell, Mr Craig Thomson, and Mr Michael Williamson, who at the time he was engaged in corrupt activities of the Health Services Union was in fact the federal president of the Australian Labor Party, so deep do the roots go, so closely does the corruption of the trade union movement spill over into the affairs of the Australian Labor Party. More recently, as we have seen this week and we will see no doubt throughout the week, there is the exposure of yet further revelations about the role of the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, in corrupt activities within the Australian Workers Union in the 1990s.

So Senator Stephens, for all your reasonableness, for all your honeyed words, you will not be able to conceal from the Australian public the fact that the Australian Labor Party is tainted by the culture which taints the trade union movement. Not every member of it, of course; certainly not Senator Ursula Stephens, certainly not most of my Labor Senate colleagues. But the fact is too much of the trade union movement in Australia is corrupt, there are too many corrupt officials and too often that corruption spills over to taint the parliamentary wing of the Australian Labor Party.

I think most Australians would regard it as fair enough that the senior officials and office bearers of the trade union movement should be subject to the same obligations as company directors and senior officers of companies. I think most people would regard it as reasonable that the senior officials of the trade union movement, if they are in breach of those obligations, should be subject to the same penalties and liabilities as officers of companies if they breach kindred obligations. Senator Stephens asserts there is no comparison between trade union officials and company directors, but I do not think that that is a rationally maintainable position, nor do I think that the Australian people would accept it.

Trade unions like public companies have vast funds of members or shareholders' funds under governance. Both of them are subject to fiduciary duties in the discharge of their obligations and the handling of their members' money. Both of them have duties not only to their members but to the broader public who are affected by the decisions they will make. As anybody would know who was a student of John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist who is a great darling of the Left, he made the point in his book The New Industrial State that, at the commanding heights of capitalism, the trade union movement and the corporate sector are, in effect, a mirror image of one another. And so it is: they are both the loci of vast economic power: the power of capital and the power of labour.

So why should those who govern those powerful industrial institutions—trade unions and companies—not have the same obligations? Why shouldn't they suffer the same consequences if those obligations are breached? Tomorrow Senator Abetz will introduce into this chamber a bill in furtherance of the coalition's policy which will uphold that principle, and we know that that bill will be opposed tooth and nail by members of the Australian Labor Party.

If you wanted the clearest proof that trade union officials are held to a lower standard of compliance and to a lower standard of conduct than company directors and officers, you only have to compare the provisions of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act with the equivalent provisions of the Corporations Act. As I said before, both of those statutes impose obligations on respectively the officials who conduct the affairs of trade unions and the directors and officers who conduct the affairs of companies, and yet in the event of the breach of those obligations by a director or an officer of a company, for example, a breach of the prohibition against reckless or intentionally dishonest behaviour, the Corporations Act provides for a maximum penalty of five years in prison or a fine of up to $220,000, or both. Those are the provisions of section 184 of the Corporations Act. But a breach of the equivalent provision of the Registered Organisations Act carries no jail term at all and a much more modest fine. Why should a person who engages in the same misconduct as the director or officer of a company be subject to a different penalty and a higher penalty than a person who engages in that selfsame conduct as an official or a member of the management of a trade union? Yet, so it is. That is the law the Australian Labor Party seeks to defend.

One of the basic rules of the criminal law is that like conduct should be treated alike when it comes to penalties and sentences. But in the industrial arena there is not a symmetry between trade unions and companies. There is a total asymmetry. If you are a trade union official and you do the selfsame thing, engage in the selfsame default as a company director or a company officer engages in, the sanction against you is significantly lighter. That is wrong. It defies common sense, and the coalition under Tony Abbott is determined in government to reverse that to ensure that the cancer of corruption within the trade union movement is tackled, to ensure that trade union officials are accountable to their members and to ensure that there is a symmetry that the public would expect to see between the obligations of union officials and the obligations of company directors and officers.