Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I would also like to comment on the report and acknowledge the work that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has done over the last period of time. One issue that Senator Smith has failed to report on to the chamber is one of the most important scrutinies that the committee undertook, and that was the scrutiny of the bill to re-establish the ABCC, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. That was, I think, a very good report, a report that was carried out on a non-partisan basis that clearly outlined all of the breaches of human rights under the proposed ABCC bill. I am just surprised that that was not noted in this report, because it was one of the clearest reports I have ever read by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee which clearly said there are significant human rights problems in imposing these limitations on the rights of building and construction workers in this country.

I can understand why the coalition do not want to raise that in this report, but I just thought that while I was here I would raise the issues that were raised in the report. The report was quite clear and unequivocal about the fact that the bill as outlined in the explanatory memorandum and as outlined by Senator Abetz, the proponent of and minister responsible for the bill, clearly breached the human rights of building and construction workers in this country. It clearly breached those rights. Yet we will have coalition senator after coalition senator ignore that position when they get up to support removing the human rights of building and construction workers in this country.

Not only did we have the Scrutiny of Bills Committee in the Senate come to the conclusion that workers' human rights were breached by the ABCC bill; the joint human rights committee of the House of Representatives also raised significant issues about breaches of human rights in this bill. So the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and the joint committee were as one on this—that the human rights of building and construction workers, ordinary Australians going out to do good work every day, day in, day out, were being breached by aspects of this bill. I am of the view that, given that these recommendations came up from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, they should be mentioned here. I again say it was one of the most important discussions and reports that that committee undertook.

I am aware that, when the committee looked at Senator Abetz's explanatory memorandum to the bill and the justification for taking human rights away from building and construction workers, they said it did not meet the test for removing rights from building and construction workers in this country. That is why the committee I was involved in formed the view that the arguments being put forward by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee should be given some weight in our report, and that we should be asking Senator Abetz to have a look at this critique—this very strong criticism—of the removal of human rights by the ABCC. Senator Abetz was dismissive in terms of his analysis of why workers' freedom of association should be removed—why their rights to act in the way that every worker around the rest of the country, in different industries, should be allowed to act under the appropriate legislation. I want to thank the Scrutiny of Bills Committee for treating the ABCC bill seriously—for going through, in a very professional and detailed manner, the issues involved in removing human rights from ordinary Australians via the ABCC bill.

I do not think it is appropriate that workers' rights should be removed in this country on some fallacious argument that there is illegality going on in the industry. When the references committee of the workplace relations committee looked at this issue, we received evidence from the Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and the Victorian police that they had no concerns of widespread corruption in the building and construction industry. That was one of the reasons that was being put forward: that there was widespread corruption in the building and construction industry. That was being used as an argument by Senator Abetz and those on the other side for why they should remove workers' rights in the building and construction industry; for why not just their industrial rights but their human rights—rights that we have signed on to through international conventions—should be removed.

It was an excellent report from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. It was matched by the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the lower house saying: 'This should not happen; this should not be done.' It will be interesting to see the submissions of the senators who raised all these issues in the Scrutiny of Bills Committee report, either in support of the bill or against the bill, when the ABCC bill comes to the Senate. When they sat down, they came to the conclusion that the bill does not meet the test for removing human rights; so the coalition senators on the Scrutiny of Bills Committee have, in my view, a responsibility to stand up for their findings. I would expect them in their contributions to the debate on a bill that takes away the rights of building workers in this country—not only their industrial rights but their human rights—to stand up and say what they found when they scrutinised that bill, because they scrutinised the bill and found it wanting. They found it wanting in a range of areas in relation to building workers' human rights.

I am very pleased to have been, fortunately, in the chamber when the report came forward from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. Again, I am a bit disappointed that the Scrutiny of Bills Committee report did not contain some, or at least a little, of the critique made about a major bill that affects the human rights of industrial workers in this country. I will be interested to see how those senators behave on the floor of the Senate when they are dealing with the ABCC bill, when it comes to the floor of the Senate, given they have said it removes human rights.

It is fortunate I was here to bring the chamber's attention to these terrible removals of human rights under the ABCC bill. I will certainly go through the views of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee in detail, and I will also go through the views of the Joint Committee on Human Rights when the bill comes before the parliament; but this is an important point and I could not miss the opportunity to raise the issue of the removal of human rights from Australian workers by the coalition.