Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The conduct was so bad in that case that the judge actually added an annexure. He was so disgusted with the homophobic slurs that were used against Queenslanders in their workplace that he had to include it in an annexure. That's how bad it was.

I've got dozens of cases here. How about Justice Logan in the case of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and the CFMMEU—the Titan Cranes case? How about that case? This is what Justice Logan said, Senator Watt:

The time when enough was enough in relation to compliance with the law by this union, its immediate predecessor and, for that matter, others in history, and its officials, has well and truly passed …

That's what Justice Logan said in Queensland in dealing with the Titan Cranes case—another case involving unlawful conduct undertaken by the CFMMEU. There are pages of this. And if Senator Watt wants judges names, how about Chief Justice Kiefel, Justice Gageler, Justice Keane, Justice Gordon, Justice Edelman, Justice Steward, Justice Gleeson, the members of our highest court, the High Court. What have they said? What has the highest court in the land said? Maybe they should have been consulted or, at the very least, the judgements they've written should have been consulted. The High Court said:

The Full Court's approach in this case is apt to undermine the primacy of deterrence as the objective of the civil penalty regime in the Act is amply demonstrated once regard is had to the failure of previous penalties to have any deterrent effect on the CFMMEU's repeated contraventions of s 349(1) of the Act. The circumstance that the CFMMEU has continued to breach s 349(1), steadfastly resistant to previous attempts to enforce compliance by civil penalties fixed at less than the permitted maximum, is a compelling indication that the penalties previously imposed have not been taken seriously because they were insufficient to outweigh the benefits flowing unlawfully to the contravenor from adherence to the "no ticket, no start" policy. To the contrary, the CFMMEU's continuing defiance of s 349(1) indicates that it regards the penalties previously imposed as an "acceptable cost of doing business".

Maybe those opposite should have consulted the judgements of the highest court of this land.