Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to stand today to support the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Withdrawal from Amalgamation) Bill 2024. As somebody who has sat on the Senate education and employment committee for a very, very long time, including back in the day when we actually did have the ABCC as the top cop on the beat of our building worksites, I saw Labor senators argue that that be dismantled. They win an election and what do we see: militant, aggressive, violent behaviour on construction sites not just in my home state of the socialist republic of Victoria but right across public works programs across this country. It goes back a long way. You can change the name of an organisation, but you can't change the culture.

I'm old enough to remember the BLF, the Builders Labourers Federation. I'm old enough to remember a Labor Prime Minister that stood up to the BLF and the aggressive, militant, violent tactics of that union in the workplaces of Australians. Now we have the CFMEU, who are very proudly telling Australians that they run this government. They run the Victorian Labor government and they also run Anthony Albanese's government. It's all a bit rich, isn't it, for the Labor Party to walk in and talk about how tough they are on the abuse of women and how tough they are on workplaces with negative and toxic cultures, and yet they're very, very happy to accept the CFMEU's votes for their preselections and they're very, very happy to accept the CFMEU's support for the motions at the Labor conference.

It's taken them a long, long time to actually come to the point where they're prepared to do what Bob Hawke wasn't afraid to do and say that the CFMEU is no friend of the Australian worker and does not have the workplace culture that we think is appropriate. You talk about Set the standard. Now is your opportunity. But too many of you are conflicted. Too many Labor MPs and too many Labor ministers are conflicted in their conversation about the CFMEU—because they owe their jobs to the CFMEU. That is the sad reality of politics in this country. If we talk about how the CFMEU is behaving and the impact it's having on my own portfolio in infrastructure and transport, major contracting groups warn that productivity has declined by 40 per cent on major construction projects because of restrictive work practices over the past 30 years, driven by the union—pay rises but no productivity increases.

On a public infrastructure build in excess of hundreds of millions of dollars, it's not government money being put into these projects; it's the Australian working public's money being put to these projects. Every time productivity falls and costs go up because of an excessive EBA agreement with no productivity gains, guess who pays more? The men and women working very hard in the suburbs are just trying to keep a roof over their heads as their mortgages escalate because Jim Chalmers can't get the budget under control.

Some examples of these productivity gains on major projects are no concrete pours on projects past 11 in the morning; no automatic detection systems, so you can't have a truck that beeps in reverse; you have to employ someone to tell you whether you're going to bump into something in your truck on-site; and a spotter, so you don't need to use technology; you need to hire someone whose only job for the day is to tell you that you haven't been looking in your rear vision mirror enough. I mean, it beggars belief! This is stuff we had to do in the forties! We have a computer in our hands, but we still need a spotter on a CFMEU worksite. Superglue and other adhesives also need to be applied to lock gates to stop workers from getting into worksites. Why? Why can't they get to work? And when they actually say, 'We would have loved to have started work on that project,' they can't, because the union has locked the gate. It's not the employer; it's the union that has locked the gate.

The CFMEU has won RDOs that are baked into the calendars of workers regardless of the need for flexibility on particular jobs. I'll tell you that, when you're pouring concrete, rainy days matter. It's a bit like farming. When it's raining, you can't pour the concrete. 'So why don't we pour it tomorrow?' 'Oh, sorry, all the boys have an RDO. It's a Friday.' These are the types of issues that this union bakes in, and the taxpayer and the community pay. The community pays because roads take longer to build. They're more expensive. Councils and governments say, 'You can have stage 1, but you can't have stage 2 of that project,' which would mean you're not sitting in traffic for an additional hour that you don't need to.

The Australian Constructors Association has calculated that there would be a $56 billion productivity lisp in our economy if these restrictive work practices and turf wars between unions were removed. How many schools is that? How many hospitals is that? If this government was actually interested in delivering real outcomes for the Australian people, it might want to look at the productivity of our worksites and the impact of its paymasters, the CFMEU bosses, on destroying productivity on worksites and on infrastructure projects around the country. The two centres of the CFMEU power are in Queensland and in my home state of Victoria. You don't have to go far to understand the rorts, the rubbish and the violence that the CFMEU has wrought upon the streets of Victorian worksites.

The CFMEU in Victoria secured a 21½ per cent pay rise on their EBA agreement, and they took the rest of the day off to celebrate. Don't worry about the concrete pour. Don't worry about doing your job. Go and have a beer on the taxpayer for the rest of the day, boys. That is how it's run. Workers responded to the decision with, 'A 20 per cent pay rise. That's not enough. There's not enough Ford Rangers in the country.' That's what one speaker said. Meanwhile this mob's trying to stop you buying Ford Rangers, remember. It's got to be in EV. First-year apprentices are going to get Raptors—God bless the CFMEU. What is forgotten in this conversation is the 25 per cent increase on the cost of critical road and rail and the electrical rollout of our transition. The cost of these projects is borne by the taxpayer.

Then we had the fantastic situation of John Setka—aka head headkicker of the headkicking CFMEU—running around trying to tell the AFL, 'We're not going to build any stadiums. We're not going to do any change rooms. We don't care that you're a sport,' that most kids now, thankfully, girls and boys play right across not just Victoria but every sensible state in the land. 'We're not going to do any of your projects because one of your umpires used to do a job that meant the CFMEU had to actually follow the law. This guy's job was just to check whether the union was kicking down any doors, bullying, harassing any women on worksites, ripping off bosses and punching people. Is the union following the law? That was this guy's job, and because he had that job they are now threatening the AFL to not build any infrastructure projects for the AFL.

What did the Labour Party say? Nothing. That's because they are so conflicted. They owe their jobs to these guys. Let's face it, there aren't a lot of chicks in the CFMEU. There might be one or two ladies driving a truck somewhere and a lot are holding the signs, but in terms of who the powerbrokers are in this hypermasculine, toxic union, it is men.

I want to say thank you to Senator Lambie for always having the guts on this issue. This is not the first time she has stood up and put her principles about trying to hold this particular union to account to paper and onto the floor of this Senate. I wholly support the fact that union members should decide whether they want to be part of a bully gang. Some members will vote to stay members of the bully gang, but a lot of workers won't. They love what they do, they love their jobs, they love their industries, but they don't want to be tarnished with the bad culture that the CFMEU has brought onto workplaces.

There was another member of the CFMEU—the forestry division—who I'm sure would love to get out from under this pack of bullies, because where is this union standing up for the forestry industry? Where is the CFMEU standing beside timber workers, timber truck drivers and manufacturers in country towns right throughout Victoria, as the Labor Party shut down the native timber industry? Cooee! You couldn't find them. They were too busy buying their next Ford Ranger on their pay rise as they ripped their bosses and the taxpayers off as a result of the bullying tactics that I've outlined.

When you look at the first two years of this government, there's one minister who's actually done his job. It's not Chris Bowen, it's not Tanya, it's definitely not Giles. Unfortunately, PM, it's not you either. We wish you were not weak and distracted, but unfortunately that seems to be the character of the man we find leading our country. The minister who has actually done his job and is best placed, I think, if the membership and the unions were to actually have a say in who should lead the Labor party, is Tony Burke. He's actually done every single thing the ACTU has asked him to do.

What do we have a result? We have a weaker economy and businesses going bust at almost record levels. That is why this bill is a fantastic step forward. I'm sure the forestry division would also like the right to get out of this space, but anything that shuts down the CFMEU and brings sanity to our workplaces in the construction sector is something I will support.