Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome debate on this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024, which is aiming to place the CFMEU into administration. We should really be aiming to place the CFMEU in prison. But this criminal union's puppets in the Australian Labor Party will never go for that—or go that far, for that matter.

Getting in bed with bikies and organised crime; criminal assaults on non-union workers trying to make a living; stalking and illegal intimidation of non-union workers at their own homes; organised wage theft on an unprecedented scale in the coalmining industry; economic productivity in free fall; major construction projects worth billions of dollars at a standstill; the renewables scam driving record energy bills and leaving families desperate and homeless; a national housing and construction crisis seeing major building companies go out of business every week: the CFMEU and their Labor puppets are directly responsible for all of these things, and this is mostly just in Queensland. And while Labor will deny it, the CFMEU will proudly proclaim what they've done and wear these crimes like a badge of honour.

Labor unleashed these criminals to hold Queensland's economy hostage, faithfully eliminating any and all barriers and checks on the CFMEU's conduct and power. The Greens and Senator David Pocock are accomplices to these crimes by backing the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC. This legislation we're debating today is a classic case of shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. I've heard the tough talk about big fines and jail terms, but I have no faith this government of union puppets will do anything effective to rein in the excesses of the thugs running the CFMEU. That's because Labor has enabled these excesses.

Right now Brisbane is hosting Ekka, the largest annual event in Queensland, with an average of 400,000 people going every year. For the second year running, people going to Ekka will be unable to use the Exhibition train station thanks to the CFMEU's protest delaying its safety certification.

The larger issue is the $6.3 billion Cross River Rail project, already months behind its deadline, with costs blowing out last year by almost a billion dollars thanks to the CFMEU. In May this year, CFMEU thugs physically assaulted non-union workers attempting to enter a Cross River Rail worksite to do a day's work. These gutless cowards can be heard in the footage saying that people were not permitted to cross what they called 'a picket line'. The entitlement is breathtaking. These thugs actually believe that standing in a line gave them the authority to ignore the law and physically harm people. Even worse, they followed one of the non-union workers to his home and committed another physical assault. This disgusting unwarranted entitlement has been enabled by the union's Labor Party puppets.

The criminal bosses of the CFMEU know that no matter what their members do, no matter what law they break, Labor governments will always have their back. It was there for all to see in the innocent denials from union-affiliated Labor ministers—that they were unaware of the CFMEU's links to organised crime and the criminal behaviour of some of its members. That's why the CFMEU has all the characteristics of a toxic weed. It will always grow back to harm the economy, harm innocent workers, get in bed with organised crime, and cost taxpayers and investors billions of dollars. Labor has been embarrassed into acting after years of enabling this criminal behaviour, but you'd be forgiven for believing that nothing will change. Labor is thoroughly cowed by the CFMEU.

Last week the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Brisbane introduced heightened security measures just for a press conference by the new industrial relations minister. They were obviously worried about CFMEU members crashing it—and they were certainly justified considering that a CFMEU protest last year caused criminal damage to the building.

This parliament needs to take a very long hard look at an Australian union movement that has mutated into a virtual mafia, holding the national economy hostage. Union bosses should be exclusively focused on fair pay and safe conditions for their members. That should be their only purpose and only role. It is not their role to force union membership on workers who do not want it—and that constitutes the vast majority of workers in Australia. They see the toxic behaviour of the CFMEU and they want no association with it.

In the past 30 years, trade union membership has fallen from more than 40 per cent of all Australian workers to less than 13 per cent, yet over the years the unions have used their Labor puppets to force union membership on people who don't need or want it. They don't do this to look after workers' rights—no-one believes that nonsense anymore; they do it to satisfy their naked greed for money and power they have not earned and do not deserve.

A great example of this greed was uncovered by my One Nation colleague Senator Malcolm Roberts. Senator Roberts's work has revealed what has been called the single largest case of wage theft in Australian history. This was a dirty deal between a mining company and the CFMEU that dudded thousands of Queensland and Hunter Valley coalminers out of an average of $40,000 in entitlements. Labor are now saying that they exposed it. Ha! The truth is that they washed their hands of it and did nothing. They didn't worry about these mineworkers in Queensland and the Hunter Valley. They walked away from it, and yet they want to take credit for it. That's what they're saying—that they did the work. They did absolutely nothing.

Another example of this was the now abolished Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. This was created for small owner-operators in the trucking industry out of business, funnelling their workers into the big freight companies, where Transport Workers Union membership would be forced on them. Thanks to a desperate campaign by small businesses, the Abbott government got rid of the RSRT. Another example was the terrible industrial relations legislation passed last year with the support of Senator David Pocock and the Jacqui Lambie Network.

This is a transparent attempt to force union membership on the farming and small business sectors, faithfully enabled by a Labor government that relies on the CFMEU for a lot of funding. Where was the new industrial relations minister when this was forced on the Australian farmers he was supposed to defend as the agriculture minister at the time? He was voting for it and promoting it. That's why I have absolutely no confidence Labor will undertake more than ineffective token measures against the criminal bosses of the CFMEU. This is evident in the legislation before us. It looks good at a first glance but, when you read it closely, there's a lot of wiggle room for Minister Watt to protect the CFMEU.

Describing the process for placing divisions of the CFMEU into administration as a 'scheme', section 323B of the bill says the minister may—the minister may, not will—determine a scheme only if he's satisfied it's in the public interest. Section 323D says the minister may vary the scheme or revoke a scheme. The requirement to appoint a general manager and an administrator reeks of another job for the boys. There are no requirements for criminal checks on these appointees. This is why I have no confidence this will rein in the excesses of the corrupt leaders of the CFMEU.

If Labor were serious about this, they would reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission as an independent body with the power necessary to hold union bosses to account. We must have a strong independent watchdog as a powerful check on union activity. It took a double dissolution election in 2016 to create it in the first place, with Labor fighting tooth and nail against it to keep their corrupt CFMEU money flowing freely.

We also need to bring back the Registered Organisations Commission and have another good look at the ensuring integrity bill. As I said earlier, I had my reasons for not supporting it before but I'm prepared to have another go. It may also be worth examining the proposal for an industry regulator made by Master Builders Australia—the construction industry compliance and corruption agency. Importantly, this proposal includes the agency being home to a permanent cross-jurisdictional police unit dedicated to targeting and eliminating criminal activity and organised crime. A more direct and simple solution would be to ban unions or any associated entities from making donations to political parties. There are bans on property developers making political donations in the Australia, as well as tobacco and gambling interests, so there should be bans on unions making them too. Corrupt union bosses are no less toxic to Australians than tobacco or gambling addictions. If Labor had any moral centre, it would refuse to accept donations from the CFMEU anyway. We know that won't happen. But they're too dependent on that money. The CFMEU is a parasite that Labor just can't get away from.

Perhaps the worst example of how corrupt union bosses are destroying the country is the renewable scam. Industry super funds, many of which have CFMEU bosses as directors, are some of the biggest investors in renewable energy. They made their Labor puppets set up the renewable scam which guarantees generous returns for these investments underwritten by taxpayers. Those returns end up in Labor's election coffers. It's the main reason behind Labor's childish scare campaign and outright lies about nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is the proven emissions-free technology that, if adopted in Australia, could effectively end the union bosses' renewables scam. As I've said before, you only have to follow the money to get to the truth of this scam which is crippling Australian households and businesses with some of the world's highest electricity costs. All of this needs to stop. Labor will not stop—