Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

Bullying, thuggery, intimidation, standover tactics, vile threats, refusing to obey the law, fines now totalling in excess of $10 million, cartel-like behaviour between some head contractors and the CFMEU, actively and proudly locking out of the building and construction industry mum and dad hardworking sub-contractors, taxpayers paying up to 30 per cent more for public infrastructure, fewer schools, fewer roads, fewer hospitals and industrial action proudly taken to ensure delays in the building of children's hospitals. Unfortunately, for too many years now, the building and construction industry has proven to all Australians the worst examples of illegal industrial behaviour, unnecessary disruption and unrest.

The sheer weight of evidence regarding this unlawful conduct is staggering. To quote recent Federal Court judges in relation to the CFMEU:

No penalties that have been imposed in the past have appeared to reduce its willingness to breach the law.

As for the position of the CFMEU itself, the commissioner tendered schedules of prior cases involving the CFMEU that on any view reveal a lamentable, if not disgraceful, record of deliberately flouting industrial laws.

It has also been stated that the 'normalisation of contraventions' by the CFMEU:

… has been the subject of comment by judges on so many previous occasions that any further observation on my part here would amount to little more than stating the obvious.

… if there is any union in the industrial universe which should be acutely aware of the importance of understanding the boundaries of lawful conduct in the prosecution of disputes, it is this one. Self-evidently, it does not care to do so.

It was also stated that the CFMEU:

… is an organisation with a long and sorry history of industrial disputation in which its willingness to disregard the industrial laws of this country seem to know no bounds. The CFMEU has an egregious record of repeated and wilful contraventions of all manner of industrial laws.