David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise also to make a contribution on these bills—the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. As you would be fully aware, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, the construction industry is vital to Australia's economy. It contributes to employment, productivity and to just about any aspect of the economy that you care to think of. The construction industry is vital and at the heart of it. It builds the offices, apartments, roads, shopping centres, hospitals, universities, schools, airports and other infrastructure that every single Australian uses every single day. In that sense, it is also Australia's third-largest industry, which highlights the significance of the construction industry to the economy. It contributes eight per cent to gross domestic product. I mentioned also that it employs people. In fact it employs nearly 1.1 million Australians. There are more than 300,000 small businesses in the building industry. They can be from sole trader plumbers and electricians up to very, very large companies that are involved in construction, employing many hundreds and in some cases thousands of Australians.

But there is a big problem with the construction industry in Australia as it stands today. There is a toxic culture in the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, which causes this big problem in the construction industry. This big problem creates issues that flow right through the economy, and that undermines the positive effect that the construction industry has on the Australian economy that I was referring to before.

As at October 2016, just last month, there were 113 CFMEU officials before the courts for more than 1,100 suspected contraventions. In recent years, the courts have imposed more than $8 million in fines on the CFMEU's lawbreaking. In the words of a Federal Court judge, the CFMEU's record of noncompliance with the law is 'notorious', and their record 'ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement.'

I would have thought that every single member of the trade union movement who is a member because they want to do the right thing by the workers and ensure that workers' rights are appropriately protected and looked after would consider those quotes by that judge, and the other evidence that backs up the big problem I am talking about, abhorrent. They would also reject those problems that we see, as demonstrated by the findings about the CFMEU and other unions.

How does this play out? What costs does this impose on our economy? Currently around two out of three working days lost from industrial disputes are in the construction industry. Given that that the construction industry represents about eight per cent of our GDP, the fact that 66 per cent— (Time expired)