Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What we have here is the Prime Minister's get-out-of-jail-free card. It is safe territory for the Prime Minister. He has clearly besieged at the moment. He is leading a party that is incredibly divided, and divided on all sorts of issues. But there is one thing that unites the Tories, and it is making sure that you do all you can to dump on the union movement—a bit of good old-fashioned union bashing! Nothing brings those disparate voices within the coalition closer together than a bit of good old-fashioned union bashing.

Do you remember it was the reason we went to the double dissolution election? A lot of people have forgotten, because it was the legislation that dare not speak its name. It was the trigger for the double dissolution election—not a peep for the entire duration of that election campaign and not a peep for months afterwards. And so here we are, on the back of a late-night sitting last night, with legislation rammed through thanks to the support of the crossbench and people like Nick Xenophon who thought this legislation was so critical that after five months we had to sit until three in the morning to pass it. And here we are now, debating the abolition of the ABCC.

When it comes to tackling corruption in this country, the government is not interested in tax manipulation or scandals. We have heard about lots of them within the banking and the financial sector. They are not interested in corruption within the Public Service. We have heard evidence of that, with many examples within state parliaments. The government seems only interested in tackling wrongdoing by its ideological foes—that is, when working people come together under the banner of the union movement.

We have heard time and time again about the misconduct and conflicted incentives in the banking industry. That is actually having a material impact on the lives of ordinary people. This is actually ruining people's lives; it is eroding their life savings and it means that many of them, when they face injury or the death of a loved one, are unable to get the sort of support and assistance they believe that they paid for. And yet we have the government refusing to support the Greens' calls for a royal commission into the big banks and the financial sector. Instead, what they want to do is to make life easier for unscrupulous employers and harder for ordinary working people.

I will just say to them: if you are so concerned about the issue of widespread corruption, why not get behind the Greens' call for an anticorruption watchdog? It is something that would have the capacity to look right across different sectors within our economy, not just at employees and unions but at employers, and not just at the construction industry but right across the economy—including the work that we do here in this parliament. But instead of supporting the creation of a national anticorruption watchdog what we have is the government intent on coming together and uniting a party room that is incredibly divided and, of course, resorting to its get-out-of-jail-free card: a good old-fashioned bit of union bashing.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, 'How did we get here?' Of course, we still are not clear about where crossbenchers are and we are not clear about what amendments have been negotiated. We are not sure about the role of regulation through extensive legal coercion powers. It is, unfortunately, much like last night: a bit of a black box at the moment. And let us be clear about what we are trying to protect: we are here to protect ordinary working people coming together, looking to defend their rights at work. Remember that the trade unions were founded with the purpose of protecting the rights and interests of the workers that they represent. Unions are nothing other than a collection of workers organising to ensure that their rights are represented in what is often an unfair and unequal playing field.

We hear time and time again that when things go wrong in workplaces it is the unions that actually step up and help to look after those people affected within the workplace. And this is true within the building and construction industry. We know that construction workplaces are unsafe. We know that there are many people who do not return home after being injured at work, and we know that some of them come to very serious harm. We know that families are left grieving because of unsafe workplaces, and it is the role of the construction union to ensure safety within the workplace.

What this bill does is give workers in the construction industry fewer rights at work because of the industry they work in. We are just singling out one industry and saying, 'Because you work in that industry we're going to strip away some very basic rights and we're going to make your industry the target of laws that no other industry is subjected to.' With this bill the government wants to set up what is effectively a new secret police within the construction industry. They are going to have the right to take workers off site, to pull them in for questioning and to demand answers of them. They are not going to have the right to silence—a basic right afforded to common criminals. They will not be able to talk to others about the fact they have been pulled in for secret questioning.

And let's look at the justification. You would think that with laws this draconian and this extreme that, clearly, there must be widespread evidence of gross malfeasance. When you are going to use such a big sledgehammer, what is the justification? What is it? No-one is suggesting that there are not issues in the construction industry—of course there are. As I said, there are people injured and dying, tragically, on construction work sites every week. There are many workers coming in from overseas or who are being exploited, working on $10 or $12 an hour. The government could be working to stamp out sham contracting. Even the title of the bill, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013, is confused and untargeted.

Let us remember this: when the Australian Building and Construction Commission existed, productivity in the construction industry flatlined. Once the commission was abolished, we saw productivity increase. Again, let us look at what the experience was when the Australian Building and Construction Commission was established under a previous government. We saw that productivity was flat and, when the commission was abolished, we saw a significant increase in productivity. What kind of wider economic effect is the government seriously expecting from this legislation? What is going to be the impact of this legislation? The answer is 'none'. If past experience tells us anything, it is that this bill is not about productivity. It is not about corruption. It is not about anything other than a targeted, ideological attack on the opposition. This parliament should not be so narrow and so petty that, as the centrepiece of the government's legislative agenda, it chooses to confront an issue like this. If this is the peak, if this is at the centre of the government's legislative agenda, then this is going to be a period of government with a clear lack of any coherent vision, a period of government that will be unproductive and a period of government that ignores the challenges that face us as a nation.

We could focus on the great challenges that lie ahead of us: catastrophic climate change and the role that Australia could be playing in bringing down our emissions, creating jobs and investment in those regional communities who so desperately need them and creating international investment around the renewable energy sector. We could recognise that we have huge challenges when it comes to addressing the structural problems within the budget. We have a revenue crisis, but we have an opportunity to be able to pay for the services and the foundations of a decent society through ending the rorts of negative gearing and capital gains tax, ending multinational tax avoidance and ensuring that we do not provide tax cuts to the wealthiest Australians—instead raising revenue from those people who can afford it most. Instead of dealing with those challenges, we have a government with no agenda, no plan and no vision, looking to unite a divided party room over a piece of legislation that strips away basic rights for ordinary working people.

The Australian Greens will oppose this legislation. We will ensure that we do whatever we can to strengthen the rights of people at work, rather than to weaken them.