Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

I'll get to the point. You're suggesting that the Attorney-General's got another piece of legislation in his pocket that he's waiting to introduce that is going to crack down on all of the abuses that we've seen over the last six months in particular—in practice, over seven years of this government—where managing directors have got away with things that you're now seeking to impose upon workers and their trade unions. You're giving us a little bit of a hint that maybe the Attorney-General is thinking about imposing some of those obligations that you're seeking to impose on union officials on those managing directors. I suppose the first observation about that might be: where's the equivalence argument? You're imposing all these obligations on trade union officials and their members. If there's an equivalence, why isn't that legislation there already? If you're seeking to treat managing directors, who make decisions like we saw in Westpac, in the same way as ordinary trade unionists, why isn't that legislation in place already? It's not. The reality is that there's no equivalence between the way this government treat employers and managing directors and the way they're seeking to treat the people who represent unions.

More importantly, if the government were fair dinkum and if the Attorney-General were fair dinkum about treating them the same, then why haven't we seen those amendments in the course of this debate? What's happened to those amendments? The government has managed to come up with dozens of amendments to its own legislation, but none of them do the things that you hinted at, Minister, which was to impose obligations on managing directors and directors that you're seeking to impose on trade union officials and their members. There is simply no evidence whatsoever that you're fair dinkum about doing that. If you were, you've had weeks. In fact, this bill—or variations of it—goes back to 2017. You've had all that time—the last two years—to crack down on the sorts of abuses that we've seen in Westpac only this week and all sorts of other circumstances that Senator Gallacher, Senator Sheldon, Senator Pratt and Senator Ayres have already mentioned. I won't go back over them again. With all of those circumstances, you've had an opportunity to do that, and you can do it right now. You could delay the bill. We've still got another week. We've still got all of next week to deal with this matter. There's no particular reason why this bill has to be debated today. You've got all of next week. You can go away and then come back with a bill that does treat union officials and their members in the same way that you're treating directors and owners of companies.

Senator McCarthy interjecting—

It's been suggested by Senator McCarthy that you could even have Christmas to think about that. There's plenty of time. We're back here in February. There's plenty of time to go away, get the Attorney-General's Department to come up with all of the amendments that would do what you're hinting might be done if this legislation passes, which is to try and create some equivalence. The reality, of course, is that you're not going to do that. You won't go away and write any amendments that treat managing directors in the same way you treat union officials, because you're not fair dinkum about it.

The point I made before was that this is Work Choices mark 2. Tony Abbott told us it was dead, buried and created.