Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to indicate that I am a bit disappointed that Senator Xenophon has reached another backroom deal that will not actually fix the problem. This security of payments working group is a working group. Senator Xenophon spoke about the Economics References Committee report which was called 'I just want to be paid'. Workers, contractors, businesses in that industry just want to be paid. What this does, as I read it, is set up a working group to monitor

the impact of the activities of the Commission on the conduct and practices of building industry participants in relation to their compliance with laws ( security of payment laws ) of the Commonwealth, the States and the Territories that relate to the security of payments that are due to persons in relation to building work;

It goes on to say: 'make recommendations to the ABC commissioner'.

Making recommendations to the worst public servant this country has ever seen—making recommendations to Nigel Hadgkiss, a discredited, biased political operative. How dumb can this get! This guy has no interest in any of these issues. He is the person who said that he has 'core business and nothing else matters'. Security of payments has never been a core business for this guy. The single biggest issue in the industry of non-payment is phoenixing—where a company deliberately goes bust and sets up as another entity with maybe not even the same board or the same directors but sets up with basic control of the puppets who are there doing their bidding.

This in my view will not work. The main loss of money in the industry—and there is $3 billion worth of unpaid debt or $2 billion according to ASIC and the ATO—comes out of phoenixing. All this talk of 'We will chase them down' and 'We'll have Nigel Hadgkiss out there fixing them up' is absolute Disneyland stuff. All this does is monitor the impact of Nigel Hadgkiss and his minions. It doesn't do anything. It makes recommendations to Nigel Hadgkiss about 'policies, procedures or programs that could be implemented to improve compliance by building industry participants with security of payment laws'. What is this?

Senator Xenophon talks about our committee's report. There are 44 recommendations in the report. Senator Xenophon, I do not know if you were there when the ATO and ASIC gave their evidence, but they indicated that they had set up a phoenix task force. They understand where the real problem is. It is not having Nigel Hadgkiss running around if he feels like it, reporting to some group under his basic direction. It is not that at all. It is actually dealing with the phoenixing in the industry and the money which that rips out of the industry. The task force that is there now has 16 government agencies on it. They are working on the big issue now, and you are trying to tell is that Nigel Hadgkiss is going to fix this up with some monitoring group, or work group, reporting to Nigel Hadgkiss and the minister. Nonsense! It is absolute nonsense. The real work is being done by this task force. One of the groups on the task force is Fair Work Building and Construction. When I asked them at estimates who attended on behalf of Fair Work Building and Construction, they could not tell me. Nigel Hadgkiss could not tell me; that is how much interest he has in this. This is another piece of flim-flam dressed up as some great breakthrough for working people and small business in the building and construction industry. It is nothing of the sort. The recommendations we put forward were about actual practical issues that could deal with this after hearing from businesses that had lost everything and hearing from small businesses that are getting ripped off by first- and second-tier building groups that line the pockets of the coalition for their election funding. We heard day in and day out at those hearings about this issue.

This is, in my view, another piece of flim-flam from 'Team Xenophon'. It will not do the business. You only have to look to see that two million bucks of this is from phoenixing. If those 16 agencies—including the ATO, the Federal Police, the ACCC, the departments of employment, environment, human services, immigration and border protection, migration, the state and territory revenue offices, the Australian Business Register, ASIC and the Crime Commission—cannot fix it, do you think this bit of nonsense is going to fix this issue? Of course it will not fix it. Labor have recommendations in the Economics References Committee's report that go to these issues and will fix them. We do not support this legislation. We think it is another example of 'Team Xenophon' being absolutely outdone by this government putting up an excuse to vote for legislation that is going to take rights away from workers to give them a veil of some kind of legitimacy—'Look at what we are doing. That is why you have to take rights away from workers—because we have these commitments.' These are commitments that are meaningless. These are commitments that will not deliver.

Sixteen different government organisations are dealing with the main issue: phoenixing. Nigel Hadgkiss does not have any interest in this. When I asked him about phoenixing, he said it was not his core business. Do you expect him now, because of this, to turn that around? Of course he will not. He has absolutely no respect for the Senate, no respect for the estimates process and no respect for individual senators. He briefs journalists on individual senators, and he briefs journalists on stories that attack working people in this country. This guy is hopeless. This guy is the worst individual I have ever come across in a decade of estimates. He does not know what he is doing other than he is simply going to attack the trade union movement.

This will not fix the problem for small business. Senator Xenophon says, 'Well, the government has done nothing about it and this is a step.' One of the steps is already there and that is the Phoenix Taskforce. That accounts for two-thirds of the nonpayments in the industry. If there is phoenixing going on, this working group will not be able to fix it. We know it is going on, and this will not fix it. This is another example where, in my view, Senator Xenophon has either not understood the issues or has done a deal. I do not know what the deals are, but I have seen nothing tonight to say that working people are going to get a fair go out of any of this capitulation to the government from the Xenophon team and the crossbench. You, too, Senator Hinch: I hope you have some amendments coming forward that are going to make it decent for ordinary working people in this country. You can give me a thumbs up and smile all you like, but I hope that is going to happen. This is a big test for the crossbench. Are they going to allow this flim-flam, this veil of an excuse, to go forward and put up this working group that will deliver nothing in the context of the nonpayments and insolvencies in the industry?

We had sons of successful business people coming forward to our committee in Perth. You were there in Perth, Senator Xenophon. We had a major first-tier building company send a big building company to the wall. The owner of that building company—a successful, highly respected Perth businessman—committed suicide because he could not pay his workers. Your working group will not fix that, your working group will not deliver and your working group is not part of a substantive piece of legislation that will resolve this issue.

The answers are in that report. Again, the crossbench had the capacity to force this government to deal with a report that they have ignored, a report that deals with the issues of the importance of nonpayments and insolvencies in the industry. But what did they do? They have given us a working group. It just beggars belief that they can have so much power and exercise so little of it. It is not an outcome that will deal with this issue. I am of the view that this is not acceptable. The crossbench could have had the recommendations of the references committee that Senator Xenophon speaks so highly of. I thank Senator Xenophon for recognising the role that I had: I was part of the committee process and part of the Senate process. I was pleased to be there. I was the senator who got this up and running. I was keen to try and deal with this. I did not want to see the suicides, I did not want to see the family break-ups, I did not want to see the small businesses going bust and I did not want to see workers not getting paid and not being able to pay the bills, leading to family disruption. We have come up with 44 recommendations. Those are the recommendations this government should have been forced to accept. If it had done that, we could have had trials in place to deal with this for projects worth more than $10 million.

This lot over here are pretty quick to force their ideology on working people. When we have the power and capacity to force reasonable positions on this government to safeguard workers, to safeguard small business, what do we come up with? We come up with a working group under the auspices of Nigel Hadgkiss, reporting to Nigel Hadgkiss—what an absolute joke! I have been disappointed in what has been done so far, but let me tell you: this is my biggest disappointment. I do not want to see more suicides, I do not want to see more businesses go bust, I do not want to see more family break-ups, I do not want to see workers not being able to put food on the table for their kids. The answers are in the Senate references committee report that Senator Xenophon was part of. And what do we get? We get a security of payments working group reporting to the worst public servant in the country. Why would we give Nigel Hadgkiss more power? Why would we give Nigel Hadgkiss more responsibility? I do not understand that. We should be getting rid of the guy. He is biased, he is incompetent, he is secretive, he is full of cronyism in that place, and we are giving him more if we support this tonight.

Well, Labor does not support this. These are devastatingly bad amendments trying to deal with an issue that is so important. This leads nowhere. No wonder the government are smiling over there. No wonder they think this is great. This is taking the play lunch off the Xenophon party. This is not good and this should be opposed, because there will be more deaths, more businesses going bust, more families busting up because we have not exercised the power that we have. (Time expired)