Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

In rising tonight I want to remind this place of the history of this particular piece of legislation. This bill was introduced into the 44th Parliament on 14 November 2013. Indeed, it was introduced by the former Minister for Employment, Senator Eric Abetz. The bill in fact sat idle until 17 August 2015, when it was defeated in the Senate. The same bill was reintroduced in February 2016 before being defeated again in April 2016. As we know, the government used it as a trigger for the double dissolution. If the bill were the cause of the double dissolution which resulted in an election, you would have thought this bill would have been of the utmost importance to the maintenance and direction of our nation. However, the Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, mentioned the ABCC legislation on only four days of what was a very long election campaign of some 55 days—four out of 55 days. Why so little mention of it? Quite frankly, the Prime Minister and this government know that this legislation is unpopular; it is not a vote winner; and its basis is completely unfounded and unjustified. It is, in fact, a political witch-hunt.

The government established an $80 million political witch-hunt royal commission in an attempt to justify it unsuccessfully. The royal commission report weakened, rather than strengthened, the case for the re-establishment of the ABCC, and that re-establishment in this legislation is completely and utterly unnecessary. As we know, we already have a building industry regulator in place and therefore the choice before this parliament today is not whether to establish a regulator, because we already have one—the fair work building commission which already has coercive powers. In its last annual report the FWBC had 124 investigations and used its coercive powers on 14 occasions. So, clearly, we have a regulator, and it is working. There is, in my view, no need to replace it, particularly when we know exactly what the legislation before us will do—we have seen it before.

What of the ABCC last time? Ironically, the bill before us is named 'improving productivity', but this, my friends, is so far from the truth that it is most laughable. The last time the ABCC was established, it did not bring in a new era of productivity; rather we saw productivity decrease in this country. Construction industry productivity increased more in the seven years before the introduction of the ABCC than it did in the seven years of the ABCC's existence. Productivity has been higher every year since its abolition in 2012. The ABCC did not reduce industrial disputes last time, either. Apart from an aberrant quarter in September 2012, working days lost per thousand workers due to industrial action under the FWBI were nine days lower than they were from the start of the series under the ABCC of some 10 days. In fact, there was less industrial action without the ABCC. The total number of days lost each year is similar on average under the FWBI—29,866—to under the ABCC at 29,950.

What could be the possible justification for this legislation? What did the legislation do last time? It in fact increased the number of tragic workplace deaths in our nation. We saw under John Howard's WorkChoices and the ABCC, workplace deaths increase by more than 25 per cent. This is a tragic and unnecessary statistic. These were the lives of workers who did not go home to their families. Deaths of construction workers specifically increased from 2.5 per hundred thousand to almost five per hundred thousand. That is five deaths per 100,000 workers, and that is a terrible statistic. Because of the ABCC, we had more families suffering what is an unthinkable tragedy—their loved one not coming home from work at the end of the day. After Labor abolished the ABCC, workplace deaths dropped by 60 per cent.

But, since Mr Abbott appointed Nigel Hadgkiss to the Fair Work Building and Construction Commission, workplace deaths have again started to climb, and I think there is an easy explanation for that. It is because, with Nigel Hadgkiss's modus operandi, the ABCC have sought to make it more difficult for our nation's unions to do their job of calling out on site the day-to-day health and safety concerns in the workplaces that members and officials see before them. The statistics demonstrate the importance of unions in protecting the health and safety of workers and, indeed, their vital role in preventing workplace deaths in our nation.

Last time, under the Howard government and the ABCC, union officials were prosecuted by the ABCC for taking action on health and safety breaches. A good example of this was in 2008, when the ABCC commenced legal proceedings against rigger Ark Tribe, following his attendance of a meeting related to safety breaches on a site in South Australia. At this meeting attended by Ark Tribe, workers were discussing various concerns they had relating to the lack of proper safety on their site. A list was drawn up of breaches that needed attending to. Tribe was called to a secret interview by the ABCC to discuss the meeting; and, when he refused, he was prosecuted over an 18-month period—simply for raising safety concerns in his workplace.

The right to a safe workplace, senators, is internationally recognised and enshrined in law in many countries. The ABCC undermines what is a fundamental right in this nation. It will make workers fearful of speaking out, because of the harsh penalties they will face. This bill means the safety of those in the construction industry will suffer. The bill mean more workers will be subjected to unsafe and possibly deadly working environments.

The ABCC restricts democratic rights and equality before the law. The re-establishment of the ABCC not only poses a significant risk to the safety of workers but also restricts, in my view, their most basic democratic and human rights. It restricts the rights to freedom speech and freedom of association, the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to silence, over basic industrial matters. In that sense, under this ABCC legislation, workers will be guilty until proven innocent for simple things like raising breaches of workplace safety.

The principle that the prosecution bears the onus of proof against an accused should be regarded, in my view, as the golden thread of the criminal law and a cardinal principle of our system of justice, and this bill removes that for workers in our nation.

These are rights that we in a democratic country hold very dear. They are rights that we must protect. Under this bill, the ABCC will have coercive powers that can compel everyday workers to be subject to things like secret interviews, deny them legal representation or threaten them with imprisonment if the person subject to such coercive powers refuses to cooperate. The powers are excessive, undemocratic and unwarranted. I know that from speaking to workers who were affected firsthand by the first iteration of these laws, when they were previously in place.

The International Labour Organization condemned the ABCC for being contrary to our nation's obligations as a signatory to international labour conventions. Shame on us. This legislation targets construction workers in our nation. It extends the reach of the ABCC into picketing and offshore construction. It extends the ABCC's jurisdiction offshore to as far as Australia's exclusive economic zone or waters above the continental shelf. It will also encompass the transport and supply of goods to building sites, including resource platforms.

These extensions of the ABCC's powers demonstrate the government's very clear agenda of attacking construction workers, wherever they may be working. This bill targets one group of workers and not others. They are being singled out for special treatment in a way that is completely unprincipled and undemocratic. It is a targeted attack on construction workers—an attack on workers in some of the most dangerous industries in our country. Why the government would want to paper over the risks that workers take in this industry, by silencing their right to raise concerns, completely baffles me. These are workers we should be protecting, not attacking. We should be protecting and supporting them, and valuing the contribution they make to our country in doing dangerous jobs, building our infrastructure, our homes, our ports, and our offshore oil and gas facilities. Construction can be dangerous and dirty work, and we need the protection of unions to help keep workers safe, because everybody has a role to play in that.

The ABCC has no protections from abuse of power by the regulator that oversees it. The government's bill removes the current protection which requires the director of the Fair Work Building and Construction Commission to apply to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue an examination notice. This is akin to the police being able to conduct a search without having to go to a magistrate to justify why they need a warrant. There was a similar principle in the previous iteration of the legislation and it had a terrible effect on the workers that it was used against. This means that workers that may be affected by this legislation will have no protection from an abuse of power by the regulator. It is quite a scary concept indeed. It is part of a very strong anti-union agenda coming from the government, and I wish I could say I was surprised by this. Sadly, I am not. We have seen it from the government time and time again. Workers have fought it time and time again, and they will continue to. We on this side of the chamber will continue to fight with workers, arm in arm with them, against this agenda. It is part of an ongoing agenda from the coalition to undermine the union movement and to undermine the workers we represent.

The Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 seeks to create criminal penalties for actions that are not criminal—industrial disputes are civil disputes, and this bill does not change that. Despite what the government tries to tell us, the ABCC will not stamp out criminality in the construction industry. The explanatory memorandum to the bill refers to violence and thuggery as reasons why this bill should be passed, but these are criminal matters, properly dealt with by existing laws and criminal law enforcement agencies. Fair Work Building and Construction can and does make referrals to prosecuting authorities, where necessary. It is completely untrue that this bill will deal with criminality, because it does not. It is a lie. It does not even attack corruption. This bill cannot adequately address corruption either. This bill is about the unnecessary and harsh industrial regulation of workers in the construction industry. Make no mistake, senators: this legislation is an attack. It is a nasty, pathetic, politically-motivated attack on construction workers in our nation. It is an attack based on lies.

The Liberal government is again trying to demonise Australian workers and make them out to be criminals, which they are not. This government talks about industrial action, strikes and pickets, and under this bill it wants to introduce harsher penalties for taking what is simply industrial action. The reality is that levels of industrial action in our nation are at an all-time low and have been for many years now. I am sick and tired of this government, and other Liberal governments before them, attacking unions. They have attacked unions unfairly, harshly and completely unjustifiably. I am particularly sick of them attacking unions like the CFMEU, a union which has fought long and hard battles, to the betterment of its members. It is a union which has had to deal with some of the most abhorrent cases of workplace health and safety breaches. It is a union which has had to deal with the most tragic of workplace deaths. Indeed, an old friend and comrade of mine, Mark Allen—who was a union organiser in Western Australia—died more than 20 years ago. It is a union which has had to fight with employers who undermine workers' pay and conditions time and time again.

On that note, I remember a very bright sunny day in November last year. I was walking through East Perth on my way to a meeting and I saw a street closed off. There were ambulances and flashing lights right next to a JAXON construction site that I have often walked past. Indeed, my old office was a couple of houses down. It looked like something pretty serious was going on—and it was. I hurriedly looked on internet to find out what was going on. Media was swarming around. I was incredibly upset and alarmed to find that two Irish workers had been killed that morning by a falling concrete panel. These deaths were tragic and utterly avoidable. The CFMEU had attempted to visit this site to inspect for safety breaches and were prevented from doing so by JAXON. They were prevented from accessing that site and other JAXON sites a total number of 18 times. These two deaths and others like them—like the German woman that was tragically killed quite recently in Western Australia—were utterly and completely preventable. It is exceedingly alarming to me that construction deaths make up 15 per cent of all workplace deaths, despite the industry making up only nine per cent of our workforce. We rely on unions like the CFMEU to ensure that workers in the construction industry are safe at work. We rely on unions like the AMWU to ensure that workers are safe at work so that they can return home safely to their families.

The right to take industrial action on the basis of safety concerns is absolutely fundamental to workplace safety and to our democracy. Workers should have the right to withdraw their labour when their employer is not treating them fairly or when their workplaces are not safe. The right to withdraw your labour under those circumstances is absolutely fundamental. Labor has repealed this horrible legislation before. This place has, more recently, rejected this legislation. (Time expired)