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

I rise to take up the challenge to address some of the comments that Senator Macdonald has put on the table today. I suppose I too will get around to addressing the point at issue but I cannot let some of those comments go unanswered. I do not think being a trade union official is a profession that anybody should be shy about proclaiming their success or otherwise at. It is like every other job in Australia: if you go in in the morning and you do a hard day's work then you are entitled to take your pay at the end of the week.

As Senator Macdonald probably well knows, most trade union officials in this country both historically and currently are people with a sense of community and public spiritedness. They go out of their way to advance the cause of the least advantaged people in the economy, people who are—as he pointed out—cleaning hospitals, people who are collecting garbage, people who are sweeping the streets, people who are doing all levels of jobs in a very proficient and professional way. The only way of advancing their position in the economy is to become a collective force and bargain for it. That is why there are trade unions, and those trade unions have been around for a very long time. Trade unions are governed, as I can attest, by a very stringent set of rules. The reporting obligations of registered organisations are honoured, complied with and are very stringent.

I believe this piece of legislation would actually affect some registered organisations that are not involved in trade union activity. They do have always a core of people who come to the organisation in a voluntary capacity. I could tell you of organisations in South Australia that only have a couple of trustees. The trustees will look over the accounts of the organisation at the regular meetings, will ask questions about those accounts and on a number of occasions will actually sign the cheques for the organisation. Those people are ordinary workers. They are not paid officials of the organisation. They are ordinary workers who go to work every day and then after hours donate additional time to the betterment of their fellow workers in their industry. They are unpaid trustees, vice presidents, branch committee and management people—genuine salt of the earth working class people. The sole reason for their activity out of their normal working hours is the advancement of their fellow workers in various worksites and in various industries. And this is how it has been for a hundred-plus years. This is how it has always been. And it has always been very heavily scrutinised by the regulator, if you like, and the registrar and also by an independent auditor. Each organisation has an independent auditor who works not for the union but on behalf of the members to give an independent view of the authenticity of the accounts that are presented in the general operating report. The salaries of officials are contained in there and the salaries of staff are contained in there. Despite the best efforts of those on the other side, they have not been able to cast a slur over the whole union movement.

No-one condones the activity that is alleged at the HSU. That is a major issue which I think has been addressed appropriately by the ACTU—the peak council. They should face, if guilty, the full force of the law. No-one is arguing otherwise in any way, shape or form.

To return to the debate today, what we have is a new government that is carefully positioning itself to go from basically deriding and putting out a continual barrage of negativity to actually trying to govern. They figure, 'We'll put this in, we'll slam this in against the registered organisations, we'll try to get some more publicity out of that, try to impugn the reputation of all trade unions and all members of unions, maximise the capacity for bad news to travel fast—and, at the same time, we will whack it in to the legislation committee, have a very short, sharp inquiry and go back and do our business.' Unfortunately, it has been referred to a references committee, where a much more complete examination of the process will occur.