Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

What a particularly interesting speech, because I've just heard a political speech from the opposition, talking about bringing back the actual organisation that had criminal gangs working right underneath it and didn't see a thing. They want to come in here and say: 'We've got an answer. Let's put the same people and the same organisation in control.' More of the same thing is what they want. The difference is that we've made firm, direct action to make sure that we can turn around and make sure the criminal element is out of that industry, because they saw it flourish under their proposal, their strategy, and they want to readopt it. Not only was it unsuccessful; it saw productivity collapse in the construction industry. That's how successful they were. But they want to play politics. They want to reinstitute the same lame organisation that failed before.

When you start looking at what they did do with the ABCC, I'll just give you one example—there are so many—of where they turned around and sued the union over flags for half a million dollars while there were issues about organised crime. They sued the union over flags. They sued the union because they wanted female toilets on a worksite. These are the big issues where they want to get the dogs out to turn around and make a change. What you should do is listen to what we're doing, understand why it's being done and understand that working people in that industry deserve the representation they should have, because what they're really about is not having working people getting representation in construction. That's what they're really about.

When they had the ABCC there—I'll give you one of many examples. Back in 2018, the Royal Hobart Hospital was one of the biggest construction sites in Tasmania. The ABCC went out to that site on numerous occasions and never found anything wrong. But what was happening? There were 200 Chinese workers engaged on that site, many of them on student visas or other temporary work visas, who had not been paid for six weeks. They hadn't been paid. Their entitlements were taken off them; they'd been ripped off. There was sham contracting, and the ABCC, despite being at the site multiple times, never sniffed a single thing. Guess what? In 2019, their crap organisation dropped any charges.

So we know what you're about. You're not about fixing this industry up. You're not about making a difference. To hear a criticism—I'll take it as a misstep because I know the good senator. You know, we might disagree on things, but I know his morality is questionable but ethically right.