Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Bereft of the depth of legal knowledge of Senator Brandis, I can probably only surmise that the difference in penalties has probably risen from the actual performance of the two respective organisations which he talks about. The facts are, I suppose, that registered organisations looking after industrial interests have probably got a 100-year history and have probably got good probity and prudent fiscal behaviour. Whereas, it is clear that those who have made the laws in Australia over the last 100 years have sought out people who run companies as perhaps being a high risk, and therein lies the answer, if you like, of the $220,000 and the five years of jail. I think that Senator Stephens hit the nail on the head: this is a never-ending smear campaign particularly against the Prime Minister. But I suppose it is a double-edged smear campaign because Senator Brandis and Senator Eric Abetz can smear the whole trade union movement at will.

I take that fairly personally. I have been a trade union member for over 35 years, have spent some 20-odd years as an official of a trade union, have lodged about 15 financial reports and have looked after the financial and industrial interests of a number of people throughout South Australia and the Northern Territory. I came into the union through an election as a committee of management person.

The committee of management is the guts of the organisation. That is where the rank-and-file people meet monthly or bimonthly or according to the schedule agreed in the union rules, and they actually scrutinise the business of the union. They scrutinise the industrial outcomes, the industrial pursuits and campaigns and, very importantly, they scrutinise the financial reports. Throughout the 16 years that I was a secretary-treasurer, at every committee of management meeting, tabled at that meeting would be a general ledger, a profit and loss and a balance sheet. The meetings would go for at least two hours. All committee of management and all rank-and-file people were encouraged to go through the general ledger which, as everybody knows, is the record of every payment in and out of the union in the time frame from the last meeting. Then you have got your profit and loss which is basically the summation of the general ledger, and the balance sheet brings in the fixed assets of the organisation. A union is governed by a president, a vice-president, two trustees, between seven and 11 committee members and a secretary-treasurer.

I think it was remiss of Senator Brandis and Senator Abetz to cast aspersions on the probity of organisations which have represented industrial interests for over 100 years in this country. We have unfortunate allegations. As yet, I am not sure that any of them have actually been proven, but they have certainly been out there in the court of public opinion and the opposition see a great opportunity to smear the Prime Minister and to smear all registered organisations.

The reality is that unions are not corrupt, dysfunctional organisations. They collect union fees, more often than not weekly, off hardworking Australians. They voluntarily give that money to their union. There is a reporting cycle. The committee of management signs a certificate. An auditor comes in and the auditor has total access to all of the union's accounts. They sign a certificate saying they got all of the information they needed to make a true and fair judgement about the value of the union and the income of the union and they got an answer to all the questions that they asked. That report is then signed off by the committee of management. It then goes to a special branch committee of management and an AGM. I ran a lot of AGMs and at those AGMs I would do a PowerPoint from go to whoa—income and expenditure. Every line item was presented to members at the AGM and, to my satisfaction, it was generally carried by acclamation.

But that is not the end of it. Then it is sent to every member of the organisation. It is published in the journal of the union and goes to every member of the organisation. Any member of the organisation then has a period of time to raise inquiries either with the branch of the union or with the reporting organisation. I can safely say that with the 15 or 16 reports that I did we never had any of those inquiries. During my time as a secretary-treasurer there were a number of elections. Just like Labor, coalition, Greens and Nationals elections they were fairly robust elections, so all manner of impropriety in the robust electoral system that we have was suggested. I would have what is euphemistically called an s-sheet about me, alleging all sorts of fiscal impropriety, but I would put out the facts.

More importantly, those people who vote in union elections gain the confidence that you are doing the right thing. You gain their confidence because you have demonstrated it. You are clear and unequivocal. When income comes in it is reported and when expenditure goes out it is authorised and reported. It is transparent and clear. There is no opaque system. The reporting obligations on the unions are very stringent, and rightly so. They were made perhaps more stringent under the Howard government. At the same time he had his WorkChoices campaign, which was designed to destroy unions, and spent a lot of money advertising to people that they do not need to join unions because they can get all the rights and benefits without joining, we simply went about our business, talking to workers, encouraging them to join, rewarding them with increased wages and conditions and having a totally transparent fiscal position.

Unions got a lot smarter in how they reported their obligations during the Howard years because it was brutally clear that lack of transparency was probably death. We became extremely vigilant, if not more transparent than was practically necessary. Members could come into our organisation at any time and ask a question, get a copy of the rulebook and look at the finances of the union. Fortunately for the union I was involved in our finances were always on the up, so to speak, with surpluses and prudent decisions made. We disclosed how much our organisers were paid and that was in line with our transport industry standards.

A truck driver can make a respectable living in our industry. We are very happy with that. In fact, from talking to people now it seems it is getting harder to attract people into the union because of the fact that people can make extremely good money in the industry and they do not have necessarily the problems with the hours and the difficulties associated with being a union organiser.

I followed a long series of secretaries. I can go back to Jack Nolan. In his day the finances of the union were done with the old trial ledger. In fact, one of the bookkeepers I inherited had started with Jack Nolan and was the most prudent and rigorous checker of receipts and outgoings. Once I was 10c short in a pay in and I was reprimanded for that. I tried to give her 50c and say it would be an over-and-under system and she said, 'Don't be flippant.' People do not take union members' money for granted. There is a wealth of evidence that 99 per cent of trade unions in Australia are doing the right thing.

I want to go back to the criminal offences. Maybe it is the case that over the last 100 years there has needed to be higher sanctions for company directors who have committed the offence of reckless or intentional dishonesty or if they used their position with intentional dishonesty or recklessly in order to directly benefit or directly gain an advantage for themselves. I contend to the Senate that there is no history of that with industrial organisations. In clear and unequivocal terms I would like to state that the case is exactly the opposite—that there is no 100-year history of malfeasance.