Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose this bill. In doing so, I went back a couple of years and read a couple of speeches. In those speeches were the terms 'Labor's payback to union masters', 'union control of Labor' and 'the unions are now running policy'. There was a very old speech by the Hon. Kim Beazley, and in that speech he quoted Peter Reith: 'Never forget the history of politics and never forget which side we're on.' This bill, this agenda has its origins way back when Work Choices roamed the land.

The best character analysis of Peter Reith I have ever read—and this is a direct quote from the Hon. Kim Beazley's speech—was actually written about 70 years ago by George Orwell in the famous novel Animal Farm. Another George, the Hon. George Brandis, likes his books. Anyway, he introduces one of the farmyard animals:

The best known among them … was a pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movement, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker and, when he was arguing some difficult point, he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white.

I think we have a character very much the same as the one described by the Hon. Kim Beazley moving this legislation in this suspension of standing orders in the chamber. Very clearly the Hon. George Brandis believes he is invincible, believes he is very persuasive and believes that, if he repeats allegations of corruption—yet, strangely, the bill does not deal with corruption. But he repeats that allegation time and time again.

Then he repeats the allegation of foul language. My goodness, Acting Deputy President Sterle! You and I have both worked in a number of workplaces in Australia where the language is foul. That is the nature of hard physical work: people often have an intemperate use of language. I heard Senator Reynolds from Western Australia saying you have not to walk past bad activity. Well, Senator Reynolds, I am sure in your career in the Army you walked past some bad activity. I know from some of the references that have been put to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee that there are very unsavoury allegations of activity in the Army, in the Navy and in the Air Force. If you look at the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce, it was proven, so don't lecture us about an industry which you don't know anything about.

I have driven trucks in and out of building sites on many occasions. I have even worked on building sites as a brickies labourer. I know the induction process now is a hundred times better than what it was in the past. I know the difficulty of building industry contractors in securing long-term access to work. That is why we have the portable long-service scheme in the building industry in Victoria: because people do not get continuity of work. The concreters will go in and do the concreting. That part of the job is gone, they go to the next building site and on it goes. And the competitive pressures in there are intense.

What the union tries to do is organise safe, well-paid workplaces, and those people are elected. Believe it or not, they are not just found around the corner, waiting to sign on. They are elected by the members they represent and, if they do not deliver safe, well-paid workplaces for their membership, they will not be elected at the next union election. That might seem exceedingly strange to those on the other side.

But I suppose my point is this: this is a well-worn path of all coalition governments to take and try to smash a segment of the workforce—particularly one that may not be meeting their standards of wage outcomes. If they want to be able to achieve a five per cent increase and they do not think they will be able to, they will take whatever action they need—a $50 million or $60 million royal commission; they will put in place Mr Hadgkiss. A lot of the evidence that you see is digging up old ground, seeking evidence about what someone said and encouraging people to tape-record, heaven forbid, bad language. In the 42 years I have been a member of the Transport Workers Union, if I worried about bad language, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan, much the same as you, I would have no hair at all—not just grey hair; I would be completely bald if I worried about a bit of bad language.

I do not ever support intimidation and I do not ever support bullying or harassment of people. People line up on the other side and talk about an industry they have no knowledge about. They have probably never even been at a building site and have certainly never worked on one. They have certainly never worked at a poor building site where you have to worry about whether you will get out alive at the end of the day, where you really have to worry about the safety and conditions, because everybody is competing for their jobs and their space on a building site; they are competing for their trade to get the job finished, make their money and get out; and the boss and the developer are hoping it all happens as quickly as possible because that is where the money is. Less time spent on building a building is efficient. It makes money.

We have a coalition vendetta. It was the MUA. Peter Reith set the dogs on the MUA. He went down there and tried to smash that activity. Now the CFMEU are in the spotlight. Exceedingly strange, the bill does not deal with corruption. Can anybody on the other side point out what it actually does about corruption? My understanding of corruption is that something has to change hands—some pecuniary interest or some actual money. What is going on? Senator Hanson, in her contribution, said people have to pay superannuation. That is a legal entitlement. Every worker is entitled to superannuation. There was a case just recently in Western Australia which may be of interest to some senators where a worker had no superannuation paid for 12 months and died. His estate said, 'That's not his fault. His employer should have paid it,' but the court case found that, because the worker had a letter saying his insurance premiums had not been paid and therefore his policy may stop, they threw the case out. So, despite the fact that the employer never paid the contributions, there was no liability determined on the employer.

I support the right of an appropriate organisation to make sure that workers on building sites have insurance and they have superannuation. We saw two very classic cases in recent times—one in Adelaide and one in Brisbane—where two workers were killed. They paid the ultimate price. Why should their family pay another price because no superannuation had been paid on the site? Who is going to police that? Is the ABCC going to go around and check employers' records and see that superannuation is paid up and all the insurance is there in case something untoward happens? No, they will not. That is left, quite appropriately, in most states to unions and their members. They look after themselves. If they do not have their superannuation paid, they tap on the boss's door and they say, 'Pay it.' When that person pays it and he is six months behind and he goes to see One Nation or the Xenophon party and says, 'I was stood over. I had to pay $50,000 worth of superannuation,' that is only because they had paid it late. It is quite common. In the transport industry people do not always pay their bills on time. They do not always pay the legal entitlements on time. In the case in Western Australia, the mining company did not pay for 12 months and the worker had no insurance. You cannot lambaste the union for actually doing their job. They are elected to provide safe, well-paid workplaces. They go about it in a very vigorous and very successful way.

A number of times senators have stood up on the other side and complained about the language. Oh my goodness. I think they ought to get out a bit more. My local pub on a Friday night is not for people who just say, 'And how are you, George?' They get stuck in. Workers do that. It is no great surprise. And our representatives do it as well. It is no great surprise. In all the time that I have driven trucks on and off building sites, they have been a lot safer for the presence of the CFMEU. There will be an induction. You will make sure you have your hard hat, your safety glasses, your earmuffs if required and your steel capped boots, and if you do not have them you do not get on, and that is not always policed by the employers. A lot of contractors moving from job to job do not police it either. They send out their workers in the morning. Plenty of companies with electricians in Melbourne would work a 60-hour week and 12-hour shifts. You get a van, you take it home and you go to the job. You go to the job, you do the work and you go home. But, if you go to a CFMEU job and you do not have your safety gear, you probably will not be operating, and rightly so. That is not corruption, that is not extortion; that is rightly so. You should not risk yourself or anybody else on a building site. But it does cost money and people need to charge for the appropriate training, induction, licensing and provision of that safety gear.

The reality is that this is the same old agenda of the coalition government. It will not benefit them. They might win this argument tonight, but what we will have is a less safe and less well-paid segment of the building industry. We will have, despite Senator Hanson's proliferations, probably an increase in exploited immigrant labour or 457 visa labour. We will see that because of the challenges with languages. We have seen it in the trucking industry where people of an ethnic origin have been given 600 licences without doing the test. Do not think it cannot happen in the building industry. If you dismantle the CFMEU's safety-conscious activity in the building industry, you will make it less safe. Importantly, from the boss's perspective, you will make it cheaper. People will come in and bid on less safe equipment, less safe standards and will probably spin their super out for a bit. There will be more rip-offs. Senator Xenophon's attempt is honourable—to make sure people get paid on time—but I do not think it is going to be all that successful because, when you deregulate and you get the CFMEU out of all of the useful activity that they are involved in, it will be less well-paid and less safe. Unfortunately, there will be more deaths and more people not paid correctly.

Ark Tribe, a building worker in Adelaide, was one of the first people charged under the legislation. He went to a meeting as an occupational health and safety officer. He was called in and was not given the right to silence. A drug dealer has the right to silence, but a delegate in this circumstance must make a disclosure: who was at the meeting and what did they say? He refused. Through a number of court cases—it went on for quite a period of time until eventually he was acquitted—he refused to contribute under the coercion powers of this legislation. I am not sure what anybody in the building industry has done to be treated less favourably under the law than someone dealing drugs. You must tell them who was at the meeting, what you said and what was discussed. That is not Australian. That is most definitely un-Australian.

The reality is that workplace deaths and injuries will increase. If the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull has his way and construction workers are hit with a $36,000 fine for acting on safety concerns at work, fewer of them will act on safety concerns. There is no doubt about that. I come from a vintage where when a worker was killed on a building site everybody used to donate a day's pay. That was the only compensation really. A day's pay would be collected from everybody on the site. If you are going to fine a worker $36,000 for identifying and acting on safety concerns, that is really a serious problem. Essentially, it will be a $36,000 fine for saying, 'That's not safe and I don't think I can do it.'

Joe McDermott and Gerry Bradley, the two workers who were killed at Jaxon Construction in the Bennett Street project, died because their company had not set up an exclusion zone. Both were crushed to death by falling concrete. CFMEU organisers were restricted from carrying out their rights on that site. Because the company had been advised about right-of-entry provisions, no-one was able to go in and say: 'Look, that's not safe. We shouldn't organise that work that way.' Two men are dead because of the application of the current act, and those opposite want to go on to make it stronger.

There was the case at the Royal Adelaide Hospital of two workers who were both tragically killed on-site, both in a scissor lift accident. Both were crushed. There were multiple complaints about fatigue, schedules and disorganised sites, and consistently calculated blocking of legitimate OH&S initiatives from unions at the hospital site, all to no avail. But if the workers took action there would be a $36,000 fine. It is a volatile industry. It is not always as easy as it looks from the perspective of someone sitting in a Senate office. In a lot of cases these sites are multistorey and multifaceted. There are a lot of people going in different directions doing different jobs. You need vigilance in safety on any multistorey or multifaceted project. Who is going to provide it? The employer is conflicted. The employer or the major contractor needs to get things done in full and on time to get the work done, get the payment in and get reimbursed. Quite clearly, in those circumstances safety is not at the forefront of their mind. There are some very good companies with very good policies, but who enforces them? It has to be the workers. The workers have got to be able to say, 'That's unsafe.' If they risk a $36,000 fine, not too many workers are going to be saying that. They are more likely to say, 'It's not my job; I hope nothing happens,' which is not the right attitude to have.

We know that there have been deaths in the building industry for a long, long time, but I can tell you from my lived experience that building sites are safer than they were five years ago, much safer than they were 10 years ago and dramatically safer than they were 20 years ago. The only common denominator in those 30 years or thereabouts has been an active building union. They follow through not because they retire as millionaires, as property developers. They retire richer in a much broader sense because they have contributed to people's working lives. People have survived and worked longer—without injuring their back, without losing a limb, without paying the ultimate price—and they have got a decent wage out of it. That is what union delegates and organisers retire with: the knowledge that they have fought hard for their fellow worker, been as collective as they could, had good outcomes and contributed to the fabric of Australian society.

If you want to go down this path, chop up what is a very good industry and make it less safe, less well paid and more fragmented, it is not where Australians want to go. Australians have rejected your well-worn path of Work Choices and AWAs and dog-eat-dog industrial relations. Peter Reith knew which side he was on and he was not afraid to say it: 'I'm on the side of big business.' That lot over there are on the side of big business. They are doing the job for big business. They are not looking after the small and medium sized contractors in the industry. They could not care less about them. They are looking after their big end of town. That is the be-all and end-all of their campaign. They come in here screeching about someone using bad language on a building site. Well, go and visit one at lunchtime and see what happens. You will probably be treated with absolute courtesy. When things get a bit willing, people do tend to swear—that is, in the world I live in. I have four sons. They tend to turn the air a bit blue occasionally. I know from someone in the other chamber who has a couple of young lads in the building industry that they come home and are a bit robust. They are great people, they work hard, they want to get home every day safely and they want to earn a good quid. And they are members of a union, heaven forbid! They are members of the CFMEU, a great union doing good work for safe workplaces and better paid Australian workers. Long may they continue and more power to their arm.