Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for that question, Senator Lambie. Senator Lambie would be well aware that, for a number of years leading into the last election, it was Labor's clear policy to abolish the ABCC. That was because it had completely failed workers in the building industry and firms in the building industry as well. Senator Lambie—through the President—if you haven't already seen these statistics, I'm happy to show you the figures that show that the entire time the ABCC was in existence productivity on building sites actually fell. It went backwards. So, for all the claims that were made that it was going to be the solution to productivity and drive the industry forward, the facts actually show that the industry went backwards on productivity, let alone the gross waste of taxpayers' money we saw under the ABCC, pursuing trivial matters through the courts. We just went through again at estimates recently the legal expenditure—