Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion to provide for the consideration of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019.

Leave is not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent him moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to provide that a motion relating to the consideration of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Ensuring Integrity) Bill 2019 may be moved immediately and determined without amendment or debate.

It is critically important that the government's ensuring integrity bill is passed by the Senate this week. We've now had about 10 hours worth of second reading debate. Every single Labor senator has had the opportunity to speak and express their views. This bill has been on the Notice Paper for some time. It was first introduced in July. There has been a very significant Senate inquiry with lots of submissions, lots of scrutiny and lots of opportunities for people to express their views, and today the government is proposing to make available to the Senate another five hours of committee debate. If we get cracking very swiftly, we can get into the meat of dealing with the amendments and dealing with the legislation in detail.

Let us remind ourselves why this legislation is so important. Court imposed fines of millions and millions of dollars for the most militant of unions around Australia clearly have not had any impact, and it's very important for our economy and for jobs that we can maintain the rule of law, in particular on construction sites across Australia. Clearly, some of the most militant unions across Australia consider court imposed fines nothing more than a cost of doing business. They factor it into their business model. But it's the taxpayer who ultimately pays the price for this ongoing lawlessness which the Master Builders Association has estimated adds up to 30 per cent to the cost of construction projects. That is money that clearly could be, and should be, used to build roads, schools and hospitals. It should not be used to pay for inflated costs of construction projects on the back of consistent and persistent lawless behaviour in the fines of court imposed orders.

Our bill provides a fair and transparent framework which sets out when organisations and their officers can be referred to a court for an order seeking disqualification or deregistration. It is a court that will make the decision. So this proposition that somehow there is something untoward here is completely false. And, despite some of the more hysterical claims that have been made, this bill does nothing to prevent organisations which respect the law from continuing to work in their members' interests. In fact, we support them to continue to work in their members' interests.

The amendments circulated late last week and agreed upon with Centre Alliance and One Nation are sensible, and of course we will be supporting them during the committee stage. These amendments include: making the independent regulator, the Registered Organisations Commission, the only body with power to refer organisations and officers to a court for deregistration or disqualification; a demerit points system effectively giving officials three strikes before they can be referred to the courts for disqualification; removing overseas convictions as a trigger for officials to be banned; making it clear that courts have complete discretion in making decisions and that they must take into account the gravity of matters when considering an order for disqualification or deregistration; and, indeed, a new public-interest-test trigger for amalgamations based on the compliance history of those organisations.

We are very grateful for the constructive engagement by the crossbench, and we look forward to the Senate considering this legislation in detail. In order to ensure that we can get on with it as fast as we can, I will leave my available additional minutes for the Senate.