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

I stand to oppose this bill on behalf of the Australian Labor Party. Working people have got a lot to fear from this bill and a lot to fear from this coalition government. We have a government with a weak Prime Minister. It is a government which is controlled by the extremists in the coalition. We have a Prime Minister with no values and absolutely no principles. He will do whatever he needs to do, whatever he has to do, to placate the worst elements in the coalition, and this bill epitomises some of the worst elements of the coalition in its antiworker approach to Australian workers around this country. This is a Prime Minister who has no coherent economic plan—no plan on how to take this economy forward. So what do you do? You simply attack the trade union movement and give in to the worst elements in your party.

We had this GST plan from the Prime Minister. A GST was going to be put in place. When that fell apart—it did not last very long—the plan was that the states could tax themselves. That did not last very long either. And then we got down to the nitty-gritty of the coalition: their economic plan to attack the trade union movement and provide a $50 billion tax cut to some of the biggest corporations, some of the multinational corporations, in this country, which give money to the coalition to allow them to run their election campaigns. So the money would go back again through the public purse in a $50 billion tax cut to the big end of town. In addition to that, the government want to give the big end of town even more rights over working people. They want to take their rights away in order to limit bargaining in this country like no other country in the world. No other advanced country in the world has laws like those being proposed by this government right now.

We certainly know why the government are running this agenda. This is a former Prime Minister Tony Abbott special: attack the union movement. When you are in trouble, break glass, attack the trade union movement—and this government is in trouble. They are an absolute rabble. They are fighting with each other. They have no agenda for this place other than to attack workers rights. This is a government that has not got a lot of legs; it has certainly got no backbone in terms of looking after ordinary working people. It will give in to former Prime Minister Abbott, because former Prime Minister Abbott is gunning for the current Prime Minister. We know that there is chaos and division within this government. We saw it the other day when Mr Abbott was publicly telling Mr Turnbull that we should revisit the 2014 budget. Remember that budget? It was the budget that was going to cut pensions; the budget that was going to take rights away from some of the poorest and weakest welfare recipients in the country. People who cannot look after themselves were going to be thrown to the wolves. Young Australians who may live in an area where there are no jobs, where too many people are looking to get into too few jobs, would have to live on fresh air for six months. This is the type of government that it is. And we see the pressure to revisit that—cutting pensions and coming after the poorest and weakest in our society.

And part of this is their industrial relations agenda—because the one thing that stands between unscrupulous employers and bad governments like this government is the trade union movement of Australia, which has won every significant right for workers in this country. This is not a government that has ever stood up and supported increases for workers in the old Fair Work Commission. They have never done that. They have never stood up for workers. In fact, their DNA is laid out for all to see. You do not need a microscope to see their DNA because it is written all over them—and it is Work Choices. It is about forcing workers to negotiate individually with their employer. It is about subjugating workers to the will of the employer. It is about complete managerial prerogative for the company and the boss over individual workers.

If that had been the state of industrial relations in this country over the last so many years, what would the living standards of workers be now? Those living standards would be down the tube. Those living standards would be decimated. If workers think it is hard enough to make ends meet under this government, it would have been impossible to make ends meet if there had not been strong trade unions out there bargaining for the trade union movement and then those increases flowing through to the rest of the non-unionised economy. These are the issues that underpin this bill. It is about giving more power and more rights to the people who sit in the back of their Bentleys handing out brown paper bags with $10,000 in them to Liberal candidates in Newcastle—the property developers who want to build their properties cheaper and cheaper and do not want to pay a construction worker a decent rate of pay but are prepared to send a brown paper bag with 10 grand in it over to a Liberal politician, in breach of the law.

We hear much from this mob about the rule of law. But look at the Liberal Party in New South Wales. When they are faced with 10 Liberal Party politicians having to resign or get kicked out because of breaches of the law, what do they do? They sack the ICAC commissioner and they get rid of ICAC's teeth. That is what they do—because they do not want to be embarrassed with their faulty memories in front of ICAC. They do not want to have to front up to show where the money is coming from to fund their election campaigns. We know where it is from. It is from the property developers. It is from the big tier 1 companies that are going to benefit from this bill. This is all about payback to the big companies in return for diminishing workers' rights.

If this bill goes ahead, we have heard arguments that it will reduce costs in the building industry by 30 per cent. I have not seen any economic modelling or arguments to say that that is the case and would then lead to improved productivity because you reduce costs. Those two things actually do not go together. But let us think that that is right. If there is going to be a reduction in costs of 30 per cent, who do you think will be shouldering that reduction in costs? It will not be the executives on multimillion-dollar salaries. It will not be the human resources officers earning half a million dollars a year. It will not be the management group. It will be the carpenters, the riggers, the boilermakers, the fitters and the tilers who go out there every day and give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. They are the ones who will lose from this bill. They are the ones who are being attacked. You will get all this argument about 'this unlawful industry'. Well, I put it to you that building workers go out there every day in this industry and they never experience anything like what we hear from those opposite. They do not experience it. They have a decent enterprise agreement through their unions—mainly the CFMEU in the building industry, a union that is out there looking after working people. But what do this mob do? They pick the worst elements. And there are bad elements in every area. You only have to look at the banking industry. They will not have a royal commission into the banking industry, will they? No—because the banking industry is the big end of town. It is too powerful and there is too much money going into their coffers for them to actually take the banking industry on.

But they will take on the union movement because the union movement is what actually keeps wages and conditions up in this country. As we see wages stagnating in this country, never has there been a greater need for strong trade unions in this country, not weakened trade unions. And if there are people misbehaving, if there are people breaking the law, they should be dealt with under the law. There are more than enough laws without bringing in a bill like this, which provides power to probably the worst statutory office holder in the country, Nigel Hadgkiss. Mr Hadgkiss, who will head up this body, has an absolute contempt for accountability. He has a contempt for the Senate. He has a contempt for the estimates process, which is about public officers coming here and being open with the parliament about what they are spending money on and what they are doing. He has an absolute contempt for that. He has a contempt for senators in this place. In fact, this is a statutory office holder who has lied to my face on at least three occasions. I have asked for him to provide his diary—as many, many public servants and statutory officers have to do—for accountability issues. And this statutory office holder, Nigel Hadgkiss, says: 'I don't have a diary. I don't keep a diary.' Can you imagine any senior public servant, any statutory office holder, who does not have a diary?

We said, 'There must be some way that people keep tabs on what you're doing.' When I asked the chief financial officer of the Fair Work Building Commission why Mr Hadgkiss did not keep a diary and did they keep a diary and did they know what he was doing, they said no.

So we have a public officer who wants to operate in complete secrecy. What we have found out is that he does have a diary, because under a freedom of information request we got a copy of one part of his diary. So this person lies to the Senate. This person is a bully, this person is unaccountable, this person is into cronyism and gets rid of whoever he does not like within that organisation and puts his own cronies in. He is surrounded by cronies. He is vindictive against anyone who would stand up to him. He is absolutely secretive and, as I have indicated, he has lied to the Senate. This is the man who is in charge of the Fair Work Building Commission now and who they obviously want to put in charge of the ABCC, if ever it comes in.

There are a number of amendments before the Senate today. Senator Xenophon has put up a range of amendments. I must say, I have not had a chance to see the detail of those amendments, and here we are because the government wants a victory. In my view, this is going to be a Pyrrhic victory if it goes through. I need time and the Labor Party needs time to sit down with Senator Xenophon to ask some questions about the implications and the intent of some of the amendments that will be coming through. There is a need to do that. This is a bill that is complex. This bill, in terms of its impact on ordinary Australians, is absolutely terrible. This is a government which, as I said, have Work Choices in their DNA. They will attack the trade union movement. If there are people doing the wrong thing they should be dealt with under the laws as they exist. We have a regulator—a very strong and powerful regulator in the Fair Work Building Commission—but what this does is impinge even more on workers' rights to collective bargaining. So we will have a number of issues that we want to raise.

In closing, Senator Cash, do you intend to appoint Mr Hadgkiss as head of ABCC? If so, why— (Time expired)