Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry—we are actually talking about serious penalties here. What you are saying is that there should be a different sphere, where if you rip off the workers you should not pay the same sort of penalty as if you rip off the shareholders. I actually think that if you rip off the workers then surely it should be a penalty that is just as high. What the Labor Party is arguing today, and what the Greens and others are arguing, is that ripping off workers is worth a lesser penalty. That is what they are saying, because that is actually what this bill addresses. They are saying that workers being ripped off by their representatives should bring a lesser penalty, that it is not as bad as if you rip off the shareholders. How do you justify that? How do you justify that to your community?

Those who claim to represent the workers are saying, 'Well, look—it's fine. We know that those union officials were meant to represent the workers, but when they ripped them off it was not as bad as when that corporate crook ripped off the shareholders and the creditors.' In my opinion, that is actually putting the workers below those others. That is what the Labor Party is doing today. They are saying, 'Your rights don't matter. You've paid your union fees, you've expected fair representation and you've expected those union fees will be used for the purposes of representing you and not for feathering the nests of some of those who represent you.' And here we have a piece of legislation that would actually hold some of those people to account if they do the wrong thing—and we are talking about knowingly doing the wrong thing. We are talking about people who set out to rip off those who they represent. Well, I say that if you are a union crook or a corporate crook then you should be treated in the same way. You should have the law applied to you fairly. Those who vote against this legislation are, of course, denying that.

That is what this does. This bill would establish an independent watchdog with enhanced investigation and information-gathering powers to monitor and regulate registered organisations. Of course, we already have ASIC, which has those kinds of powers. It will strengthen the requirements for officers' disclosure of material personal interests in related voting and decision-making rights and charge grounds for disqualification and ineligibility for office. It will strengthen existing financial accounting, disclosure and transparency obligations under the Registered Organisations Act by putting certain rule obligations on the face of the RO Act and making them enforceable as civil remedy provisions. It will increase civil penalties and introduce criminal offences for serious breaches of officers' duties, as well as introduce new offences in relation to the conduct of investigations under the Registered Organisations Act.

Now, what part of that is objectionable? There has been very little in this debate that would provide a rational, coherent response to that question. What part of those provisions is objectionable? They claim some ideological divide. What they are doing is making an ideological divide, where they say that workers being represented should hold their representatives less to account—and that the law should hold those people less to account—than those who are representing shareholders. Because those who are representing shareholders already have these obligations.

Let's just remind the Senate of what the Labor Party's position is on this, backed by the Greens. Of course, the Greens increasingly draw their funding from unions. They often talk about donations and how that affects things. Well, of course, we know that the Greens are funded by the unions almost as much as the Labor Party are these days—they are indeed.

They are saying that, if they—their funders, the union representatives, the union bosses—do the wrong thing, if they fail to properly represent their members, if they fail to comply with the law, then they should just have a little penalty, they should just have a slap on the wrist. They are saying that, if they do the wrong thing, they should have the kind of penalty that we see applied to the CFMEU often, and which they ignore because they can pay the fine; they have the financial resources to pay the fine, time and time again, so they keep engaging in the conduct. You are holding the representatives of workers to a lesser standard than the representatives of shareholders.

So let's go to some of what is being defended here. Some of what is being defended here and some of what we have seen emerge at the royal commission needs to be exposed. It has been exposed in part, but we need to highlight the type of behaviour that we are talking about. Senator Lambie said she does not hate union members 'like some members of the Liberal Party do'—and that statement about Liberal Party members is simply not true. Some of us have even been members of unions, and when we have been members of unions we have expected they would do the right thing. And many do—in fact, most do. And those that do the right thing would have nothing to fear from legislation like this. If you go out there and you represent your members to the best of your ability, if you work hard to get them the best deal, then you would actually welcome legislation like this. And, if there is someone dodgy working in the next union, maybe someone you do not know about, then they should be held to a high standard when they do the wrong thing.

We have seen too many examples to say that we should not have a legal response—because that is what this is about. It is about saying: is there a reasonable legal response to this issue? We say there is, and we put this legislation forward to simply level the playing field. But let's look at some of the examples of what we have seen in the royal commission.

We have seen that CFMEU officials Brian Parker and Darren Greenfield consorted with underworld crime figure George Alex, whose friends and colleagues include Mick Gatto, former Comancheros, senior Rebels bikies, standover man Vasko Boskovski, recently murdered career criminal Joe Antoun, and famous ISIS jihadists Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar. These are some of the connections we are seeing. We have seen Comancheros being used as debt collectors.

Assistant Commissioner of Victoria Police Steve Fontana confirmed that they have evidence showing the overall infiltration of the building and construction industry by organised crime. He indicated that 'outlaw motorcycle gangs, including the Comancheros, have been regularly engaged as debt collectors on behalf of the industry. He said:

Victoria Police is concerned that the methods for debt collecting in the industry involve criminal conduct such as assault, threat to assault and intimidation.

This is the kind of thing that is being defended by the Labor Party, the Greens and others in this place. This is the kind of thing they do not want to see reasonable penalties for. There is a range of pieces of legislation to deal with this—whether it is the Australian Building and Construction Commission, whether it is the Fair Work registered organisations legislation—that would actually apply some proper penalties so we can stop this at source, instead of having some of this wrongdoing become endemic in parts of the industry. This is what the Labor Party and the Greens are defending. We have heard it time and time again.

Senator Conroy interjected when I mentioned Craig Thomson's name—