Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator O'Sullivan for this very important question, because the CFMEU has clearly shown its willingness to use both aggression and violence to deliberately flout the law and to impede valuable projects, at very significant costs to the taxpayer and the community alike. Senator O'Sullivan asks about his home state of Queensland

I can inform him that some of the worst behaviour of the CFMEU has recently been laid very bare in the Federal Court in Brisbane. In this particular case, the CFMEU was responsible for shutting down work on a Queensland government housing project. That is a housing project that was intended to provide housing for the long-term homeless. Those goals, of course, were of no concern to the leadership of the CFMEU. They blocked access to the site and they abused used workers who tried to enter the site. The court heard, and these are all in court records, how workers were repeatedly called scabs, parasites and dogs—plus a smattering of expletives, which were reported in the media but I will not repeat here. In fact, one particularly charming CFMEU official, a Mr Paul Cradden, approached one of the site workers and flooded him with aggressive attacks of the likes of, 'Hey scabby, gay boy gay boy gay boy scabby,' apparently not aware that it is 2015—he still thinks he is in the dark ages. Is this the kind of behaviour that the Labor Party or the Greens, who seem to support the union and will accept donations from the union, condone? The Federal Court certainly does not. It fined the CFMEU and a string of its officials a total of $545,000 for their offences. Justice Logan called out this outrageous disregard for the law, and reiterated the comments of other judges and the Cole Royal Commission when condemning their very perverse attitude to the law. In light of this, it is absolutely outrageous to see the CMFEU feigning outrage over this government's attempts to re-establish the ABCC. (Time expired)