George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the following address in reply be agreed to.

To His Excellency the Governor-General

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY—

We, the Senate of the Commonwealth of Australia in Parliament assembled, desire to express our loyalty to our Most Gracious Sovereign and to thank Your Excellency for the speech which you have been pleased to address to Parliament.

This is the 29th time in history that a new session of parliament has been called after the parliament was prorogued. As His Excellency has just told us, the reason for recalling the parliament

is to enable it and, in particular, the Senate to give full and timely consideration to two important parcels of industrial legislation—the bills to provide for the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and the bill to improve the governance and transparency of registered organisations.

As the Governor-General also said, the government

regards these measures as crucial to its economic plan for promoting jobs and growth, and managing the transition of our economy from one reliant on the mining construction boom to a more diversified economy.

The ABCC bills again aim to do what the coalition promised before the last election—to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission as a guardian of the rule of law, which not one but two royal commissions have now recommended as a necessary response to the lawlessness and thuggery that is endemic in the construction sector. Dozens of Federal Court cases support this view. The government's first attempt to re-establish the ABCC was defeated in this Senate on 17 August 2015. As the Governor-General reminded us, the ABCC bills had been foreshadowed in Dame Quentin Bryce's speech opening the new parliament in November 2013. They were originally introduced in the House of Representatives on 14 November 2013, and on the same day referred by this Senate to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee, with the opposition giving notice that same day that they would seek to refer them also to the Education and Employment References Committee, which was done as soon as the legislation committee report was received in December 2013. All of this produced months of needless delay, making clear that the Senate would refuse to pass these bills despite the government's mandate. The bills were also considered by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. With the change in the composition of the Senate, the government worked to seek to secure the support of new senators, but, as I have said, the Senate rejected those bills on 17 August last year.

The report of the trade union royal commission, they Heydon inquiry, was released in December last year. It identified overwhelming evidence that the systemic corruption and unlawful conduct of the CFMEU and some others in the building and construction sector required a specialist regulator in the sector, with strong powers and penalties. Many, many court cases provide further evidence of the need. So the bills to re-establish the ABCC were again passed by the House of Representatives in the first sitting week of this year and were introduced in the Senate on the same day—4 February. They had already been referred to yet another legislation committee inquiry into the same bills as those which had been previously referred to the same committee, with a late reporting date which was a delaying tactic to thwart the passage of the legislation.

Let me make two key points about the history of the bills. Firstly, there was a very striking overlap of submissions and witnesses between the 2016 committee inquiry and the 2013 and 2014 inquiries. In the public hearings this year, no group gave evidence which had not given evidence in the public hearings in 2013 or 2014. The reason is simple: it was the third inquiry into an identical bill, and essentially the same parties appeared before the same committee to say the very same things. Secondly, the decision of the Senate on 4 February this year to refer the identical bills to a further inquiry reporting on Tuesday, 15 March was clearly designed to have the effect—given the Senate routine of business as set out in the standing orders and the sitting calendar in its then form—that it would have been impossible in practice for the Senate to debate and decide on the ABCC bills prior to the government's last opportunity to refer them to the people, as the Constitution provides, in a double dissolution.

The Constitution provides that if there is deadlock between the two Houses on bills, this can be resolved by referring the matter to the people at a double dissolution election. But, given the 15 March reporting date set by the Senate, the only way that the Senate could in reality have had the time to debate and decide on these bills was by bringing the Senate back earlier than had been previously scheduled. This is what has now been done, in accordance with section 5 of the Constitution. And so, with the prorogation and the recall of the parliament, the time has come for the Senate to procrastinate no longer, to delay no longer and to come to a conclusion on these bills. It is for the Senate now to get on with the job of considering the bills without further unreasonable delay or excuses for avoiding deliberation.

The building and construction industry employs over a million Australians and represents around eight per cent of GDP. It is, therefore, one of the largest sectors of the economy and one of the largest sources of employment in this country. Ensuring an efficient and law-abiding building and construction sector is crucial for promoting jobs and growth, and is an important part of managing the transition of the economy from the mining boom to a more diversified economy—the central challenge of our economic policy today. These bills are about improving productivity. They will create jobs. They are about creating opportunities, protecting the tens of thousands of small businesses who employ so many people, and reducing the number of days work needlessly lost.

Upholding the rule of law will enable building projects to be delivered on time and on budget, with cost savings for consumers and for taxpayers—taxpayers who rightly expect value for money in building schools, hospitals, roads, rail, airports and more. This is crucial at a time when the government is spending tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure construction around Australia—building our future.

Upholding the rule of law in the building and construction sector is about enabling the million or so Australians who work in that sector to go to work free of intimidation and thuggery—conduct that was exposed by the Cole royal commission, was exposed again by the Heydon royal commission and has been exposed time and time and time again by Federal Court proceedings.

Let me turn then to the registered organisations bill, the core purpose of which is to ensure that unions and employer organisations have similar rules of transparency and accountability as those which apply to corporations. Why? Because there is no difference between a dodgy company director ripping off shareholders and a dodgy union boss ripping off members—as we have seen in so many cases.

As the Governor-General reminded us, Dame Quentin Bryce said in opening the new parliament in November 2013:

The law will be changed so that registered organisations and their officials are held to the same rules and standards as companies and their directors.

The bills to achieve this have been three times rejected by this Senate—once for the initial bill, and then twice for a near-identical bill—with three committee inquiries along the way. And so the government is now making its fourth attempt to have this Senate create a registered organisations commission to ensure a fair deal for union members and members of other registered organisations.

But members opposite oppose this because they want to protect their friends and paymasters in the trade union movement, just as, to take one notorious example, they protected Craig Thomson, who had ripped off union members in the most appalling ways and who, as we saw two weeks ago, continues to avoid his just punishment. Members opposite time and again protect union bosses and stand in the way of dealing with illegality rather than doing what is in the interests of the workforce and the community as a whole.

Lastly, let me turn to the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. There could perhaps be no better example of those opposite putting the interests of union bosses ahead of the interests of Australian workers—ahead of the interests of the community as a whole—than the creation by Mr Shorten of the so-called Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal to use the pretext of road safety to destroy the livelihoods of ordinary Australian mums and dads who are owner-drivers so as to favour the Transport Workers Union.

We have seen the dead hand of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments reach out to damage ordinary Australian owner-drivers and to damage the economy through the payments order made by the so-called Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. The payments order is right now forcing thousands of these mum and dad small business owners to the wall—these mums and dads who have staked their economic livelihood on buying a truck. Labor's tribunal is punishing these hardworking, decent Australian family businesses simply because they have chosen to operate a small business and not become a member of the Transport Workers Union.

So the government will be moving in this session of the parliament to abolish the RSRT, and we urge senators to support our attempts to do so. If the bill to abolish the RSRT comes to the Senate from the House of Representatives while the Senate is debating the ABCC bills, the government is prepared, subject to the will of the chamber, to adjourn the ABCC debate to allow the RSRT abolition bill to be dealt with straightaway, on the understanding that the chamber would then resume and finish dealing with the ABCC bills.

If the bill to abolish the RSRT does not pass, we will also at least seek to delay the RSRT payments order coming into effect, and after the election we will again try to abolish the RSRT. The RSRT payments order—an order of a Shorten-created tribunal threatening tens of thousands of owner-drivers, their families and the trucking industry more broadly—is yet another reminder of how Labor is nothing more than the agent of a minority interest, union bosses, against the interests of the community and the workforce as a whole.

In considering the bills we are here to consider, the Senate must decide whether it will respect the government's mandate; support or block measures that are a key part of the government's economic plan for jobs and growth; uphold law and order, where many judges and royal commissioners have shown that there is a culture of lawlessness; and be a house of review rather than a house of obstruction.

That is the challenge which His Excellency the Governor-General's speech has squarely placed before the Senate. And that is the challenge which we, and in particular those opposite, must face in coming days.