Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle. But, Senator Macdonald, to finish your contribution by claiming that, somehow, union officials have some kind of privileged position flies in the face of the number of deaths we have seen in the construction industry and the many times union officials have been prevented from entering sites to talk about safety issues. It is a shame that your contribution ended in that way.

If media reports today are correct we hear that some crossbenchers are prepared to trade human rights for water. Of course I want the best for the Murray-Darling Basin and for the Murray-Darling states, but simply to trade away the rights of workers for, perhaps, a better deal on the Murray basin is obscene. The so-called deals we have seen in this place in support of legislation are poor indeed. Last week we saw a deal made for the sake of a five-year moratorium on a particular aspect of a bill, when anyone who understands the Constitution and how governments work would know that you cannot trade away what a future government might do. So I am appalled to see today that there might be some water deal for support of a bill which absolutely, categorically breaches human rights, in this case the rights of construction workers.

As a former chair of the Senate Education and Employment References Committee and deputy chair of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, I heard in the many inquiries that we held on this piece of legislation about its impact on human rights and how it breaches the United Nations conventions on the rights of association, the freedom of association and so on. This is what crossbenchers seemed perfectly willing and comfortable to trade away for a completely unrelated deal on water. They traded the human rights of workers for a water deal, which, as we said, may or may not be a good deal. Looking at the record of crossbenchers and their deal making, the winner is always the government—and the loser, in this case, will be the human rights of construction workers.

We need only look back at the disgraceful treatment of Mr Ark Tribe, who was persecuted for years over charges which ended up being dropped, to see how fraught, ill conceived, poorly constructed and unnecessary this legislation is. There are already laws in place to deal with issues when they get out of hand. Of course, I do not stand for that—if someone breaks the law they should be prosecuted—and it is certainly not what Labor stands for. But I too want to focus on safety issues in the construction industry, which are shocking. It is an industry where lawlessness relates to safety—and that is what we should be focused on. I want to talk about the recent tragic deaths of construction workers right across Australia over the last couple of months. These construction workers left home for work, were killed at work and did not return home that evening. Imagine the impact that seeing a death at work has on other workers on the site, the trauma of having to deal with your mate who has lost their life. And then, of course, there is the impact on the family and friends of that worker. Suddenly that worker is taken away from them, is no longer around, because they died at work—in Australia. That is something we should all be saying is completely unacceptable. It is something that we as a parliament should be acting on—but, seemingly, we are not.

I want to talk about the most recent deaths that occurred on construction sites across Australia. On Thursday, 6 October, at around 4 pm, two men were working in a confined evacuation at the Eagle Farm Racecourse in Queensland. They were installing tilt panels for a large drainage pit. There was not any proper access or egress. They had to enter down an embankment to perform the task. The grossly inadequate bracing system that was being used failed. This caused the first panel, weighing 10 tonnes, to come tumbling down. The workers managed to scramble out of the way. Tragically, within seconds, the second panel came down on top of them, crushing them to death. There was not any adequate exclusion zone in their work area as a backup and these two workers had nowhere to go.

On Monday, 10 October, while working on Finbar's Concerto Apartments project in Perth, 27-year-old German backpacker Marianka Heumann was applying sealant to speed wall panels surrounding an air duct when she fell 13 floors to her death. She was working for a builder who reputedly refused the CFMEU their legal right of entry to inspect safety concerns and is well-known for employing unskilled backpackers in high-risk construction jobs. As if to add to the heartbreak, builder Gerry Hanssen sent a bizarre email to Marianka's family following the incident in which he implied that it was Marianka's fault and she would have been sorry for letting everyone down. Further, when Marianka, just 27, a person here on a working holiday with full expectations that she would return home, fell to her death it was just business as usual on that Finbar site: the concrete pour continued. A worker fell to her death and a concrete pour continued! Business went on as if nothing had happened. The site was not closed. Blood and strewn work clothing were clearly visible and accessible, and there was no effort to ensure that the scene of the fatality was not contaminated. Finbar did not even call the police, because they were so busy making sure their concrete pour continued. That was left to an ABC journalist. It was as if the fact that Marianka lost her life did not even matter—an issue worth no more attention than a dropped tool or a broken machine.

Further, on Tuesday, 25 October, while working on the Porter Street project in Ryde, 55-year old Mr De Silva died when he fell approximately three metres from formwork deck onto reo bars. The bars were appropriately capped, but the fall was enough to take his life. Twenty-eight per cent of deaths in the industry are caused by falls from heights, and again in this case, just as in the Finbar case, the edge protection was inadequate. Indeed, at the Finbar site there had been five complaints to WorkSafe in Western Australia. Orders had been issued against Finbar, and one of those orders was around edge protection.

On Wednesday, 26 October, while working on the Probuild Melbourne Convention Centre expansion, a 54-year old boilermaker was killed in a crushing incident while operating a knuckle boom. This worker leaves behind a wife and two adult children, both in the construction industry. At the time of the incident, he was working alone, welding amongst steel frames. Workers and the occupational health and safety representatives were the first to attend the scene. These representatives—as you know full well, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, but for those who are listening—are people who are elected from among their peers to be safety reps on site. They made an extraordinary effort to rescue the crushed worker and begin first aid. I simply cannot imagine the trauma for that family and their friends, and for those around who witnessed the fall and who began immediate first aid. Where workers leave home in the morning, they should expect to come home again at night without this horrible fear of death or severe injury in the construction industry, but that is what we have in Australia, particularly in Western Australia. These are needless deaths. There should not be any deaths, yet the deaths continue.

Again in Western Australia, at the Bennett Street site, where two temporary visa workers from Ireland lost their lives while they were on their tea break, unions such as the CFMEU had made more complaints to WorkSafe about suspected safety breaches at sites like this. JAXON, which is a big builder in Western Australia and has a lot of the big construction sites—along with Hanssen—is at the top of the CFMEU's list when it comes to making complaints about safety. The JAXON sites have attracted more complaints than has any other builder in Western Australia, yet we see nothing has happened. Two young Irish backpackers, whose families I met, tragically and shockingly lost their lives whilst at work. I know that union officials have been denied right of access to these sites—particularly from JAXON—at least 16 times, but you will not hear that from those opposite.

We hear a lot from the government, particularly the Prime Minister and the minister, about how this legislation, if passed, will improve productivity in the construction industry. They have not given us any facts or figures on this, and they are not a government who rely on facts and figures; they just make it up and hope their rhetoric gets them the line of the day. The Prime Minister and the minister have said that somehow this legislation in and of itself is going to improve productivity. If you look at the full definition of productivity, measured correctly, it includes fair working conditions, the right of freedom of association and the role of unions, which this legislation will clearly curtail, because that is what it is all about. Good productivity is where workers sit down with their unions and talk about issues with employers.

It is about fair employment and fair working conditions, not the $20 an hour that Marianka was earning on that Finbar site. That is what she was earning, even though the rate should have been higher than that. It seems as if she was being ripped off. After I raised the matter at Senate estimates, the Fair Work Ombudsman raided that site. At that Finbar site they will find, I am told, that, of the around 300 workers on site, about 250 are temporary visa workers. That is not a rare occurrence in the CBD construction industry in Western Australia; it is the norm that we have inexperienced temporary visa workers flooding construction work in the city. Marianka, who tragically lost her life on the ABC Finbar site, after two months—which is about how long she had been employed at the site—was regarded as one of the experienced workers. That does not add to productivity. So, when those opposite talk about productivity, it should also include a good safety record, and we do not see that in Western Australia at all.

You will hear from those opposite about how the number of deaths have gone down. We should not be counting any deaths. Zero should be our target, but they will applaud the fact that the number of deaths have gone down. But, actually, if you look at the period over which the ABCC legislation was in place you will see that the number of workplace deaths grew. That is a fact. As I said, we should be focused on zero deaths, not whether there were three deaths or four deaths. There should be zero deaths. But, of course, you will not hear that from those opposite.

You will hear a lot from the government about the militancy and so on of union officials. But, actually, CFMEU members rank safety as their top priority. They rank safety as something that they want to see improved on building sites. Is it any wonder when we have seen five tragic deaths over the last couple of months on building sites right across Australia? I know that in Western Australia deaths are on the increase in the construction industry. That impacts on productivity.

We hear nothing from those opposite. I have never heard the government say that it wants to act on these workplace deaths—never. It might try to pretend that as the federal government it has nothing to do with safety. Well, it does. Certainly it should be pushing it through COAG and doing whatever it can to make sure that workers come home from work at night. It is a pretty simple ask. Yet we see in Western Australia shocking things going on in the construction industry being completely ignored by the Turnbull government. There is the use of temporary visa workers. When we raised this as an issue somehow we were accused of being racist and whatever else. But the fact is you cannot have good safety, good productivity and fair working conditions when you have a site that is being run by temporary visa workers.

This is at a time in Western Australia when we have record unemployment levels. They are climbing in WA. I think we are now the stand-out state when it comes to unemployment levels. This is a state where the mate of those opposite Premier Colin Barnett has squandered the mining boom. He has absolutely squandered the mining boom. We now have unemployment at historically high levels in the southern suburbs. We know that in the construction industry in Western Australia there are a lack of apprentices. We know that even the Master Builders association, the government's mates, are calling for something to be done, because we have seen an absolute downturn in apprenticeship numbers.

When you look at the construction industry in the CBD, if it is being run through labour-hire companies and temporary visa workers are being used, is it any wonder we do not have apprentices. Those employers are quick to make a buck. I do not stand in the way of people making a profit, but let's not make a profit on the back of safety. That is wrong. We have seen a downturn in apprentices to the point where the Master Builders association is calling on the government and, indeed, has called on the federal government to do something about it. We have record high unemployment in Western Australia. We have appalling rates of death in the construction industry in the CBD. All of this simply goes unnoticed by the Turnbull government because they have an ideological hatred of trade unions. This is why they want this legislation. It is absolutely clear. If they were really concerned about productivity they would be talking about the death rates in the construction industry. They would be standing up and demanding we get to zero deaths in the construction industry. But, no. There has been absolute silence from those opposite on the issue of workplace deaths.

I will keep speaking out on this because I have met the families. I have seen that ABC Finbar site on St Georges Terrace in the city. It is a disgrace. It looks like a rubbish tip. Is there any wonder there are safety issues on the site when it looks like a rubbish tip? Yet those opposite do nothing. They bang on about union officials while the death rate in construction continues to climb.