Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to be making a statement on this Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024. The opposition wants this bill to be dealt with as fast, or as quickly, as possible, I would say, because this is a major issue impacting the economy and the Australian way of life. The driver of this problem is the fact that the government is generally driven by vested interests, and this is the same charge that Alfred Deakin made 100 years ago when he said the problem with the Labor Party is it is not there to govern for the people; it is there to govern for narrow vested interests—in this case, the trade unions.

The CFMEU has been a major donor to the Labor Party, and its constituent arm, the major Super funds it is associated with, have also made significant payments through to the ALP's associated unions. The enormous flow of funds has bought policy in Australia. These organisations buy policy from the Labor government and, in buying policy, they are buying the outcomes that are good for the union, not the outcomes that are good for the Australian people. That is a consequence of the Labor Party's history and present structure whereby its members of parliament in the Senate and in the House are reliant upon these organisations for support, for their preselections, for campaign financing and for manning the polling places. This is the consequence of the structure of the Labor Party and it is a cancer, frankly, because the people who pay the price for this are of course the Australian people, and the price that the Australian people are paying for the CFMEU buying the policy of the national government is a 30 per cent tax on construction costs in Australia. So every time an apartment is built in Australia, where the CFMEU is associated, there is a 30 per cent premium paid to the CFMEU.

We're living in a period where under-40s feel more frustrated than ever about the political system. One of the major things people under the age of 40 are concerned about is access to housing. The fact that the average worker feels that the house that would be an entry point for them—maybe an apartment in a city—is out of reach is a disgusting blight. The death of the Australian dream is in part due to this 30 per cent tax, which is levied on all Australians by the Labor government and its best friend, the CFMEU. These are the corrupted priorities of the government hurting all Australians, particularly younger Australians, who will only be able to access the Australian dream if we correct course and are able to build more houses at a reasonable price. That is where we are. I just want to be very clear about what is at stake here. This is not an obscure issue. This goes to the heart of one of the major problems facing the Australian people, particularly younger people. Younger people ought to know that it is this model of government that is causing so many people to feel that the Australian dream is, in fact, out of reach.

This 30 per cent issue has been addressed by the Master Builders Australia CEO, Denita Wawn, who has said:

We have always said that up to 30 per cent increases occur on construction sites, because of the activities of the CFMEU.

I was visiting a site recently in Sydney where it was very clear to me that these activities are causing a massive slowdown and an increase in cost in construction. Another developer, Mr Diaswati Mardiasmo, has said, 'There are guys on site attending, and it's all about enforcing the 'no ticket, no start' type arrangements.' He goes on to say:

… which means if you're not in the union, you don't get to work on site.

On large sites, there may be anywhere between five and 10 of these guys walking around, and that's a cost that gets built into the system, and it's a significant cost.

The country is paying the price for these people to walk around construction sites, which is a pay-off to the union and is presiding over a massive drop in productivity. Labour productivity has fallen 18.1 per cent, almost 20 per cent, in the construction sector in recent years, far worse than other parts of the economy, apparently in large part because of the CFMEU, which has been blamed for these massively inflated costs.

If you look through the EBAs, you will see that, wherever the CFMEU is involved, the output is lower and the costs are higher. At a time when the Australian dream is slipping away, putting the CFMEU in charge of the housing agenda is a very twisted priority. I wonder whether in fact the government will live to regret their judgment to abolish the Building and Construction Commission, as one of the first acts passed when they came to this particular parliament. Minister Watt was able to achieve his great dream of doing that. And I wonder whether that will come back to haunt the Labor Party, because the ABCC was perhaps the only institution capable of trying to rein in some of this appalling behaviour, which is hurting younger Australians.

If we turn to the remedies here, we've got Labor's bill, which is a start but something which needs to be significantly amended if it is to do the job. The bill as it stands gives Minister Watt complete control over administration. Given his past statements defending the CFMEU over many years, I doubt that that is a good judgment or in the public interest. That is why the coalition has recommended amendments to the bill, and we've also sought, as Senator O'Sullivan has said, to have a hearing and an inquiry into this bill, because it's so important that we get this right. The abolition of the cop on the beat here really is an unbelievable outworking of the last couple of years. It's been a bizarre parliament to be a part of, in fact, because not only have we rolled back tax reforms of previous parliaments but the parliament have rolled back integrity and governance improvements, including this and in the broader construction sector. We believe that reinstating the Building and Construction Commission would be a very good start. We think that this is an important institution, and we think that putting in place the ensuring integrity provisions is also absolutely important here.

The other bizarre element is that the government in this parliament have opened the door for the CFMEU and the Cbus Super fund to be part of the Housing Australia Future Fund. So having abolished the Building and Construction Commission and established an enormous slush fund for housing—it builds no houses but spends millions of dollars on administration and has a number of union hacks on its board—they're now opening the door for this organisation to be do business with the Cbus fund, which has three CFMEU trustees on its board. I note that this morning the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, APRA, has said it will apply licence commissions onto the Cbus Super fund and another super fund that has CFMEU trustees on its board. It is very good that APRA has decided to act. It has taken APRA a long time to move here, but the government seem disinterested in looking to protect worker savings where there are CFMEU trustees on the boards of compulsory super schemes.

They also seem to be relaxed about the idea of the Cbus fund partnering with the Housing Australia Future Fund. The Cbus chair, Mr Wayne Swan, who is also the president of the Labor Party, is the only super fund official who has publicly committed to invest with the Housing Australia Future Fund. That strikes me as very curious because the last time I looked Mr Swan was not the chief investment officer of the Cbus fund, he was the chair of the fund, but apparently he can commit $500 million of members funds to co-invest with the Housing Australia Future Fund. So why would we be giving the CFMEU and the Cbus people taxpayer funds in partnering with this organisation when we know that these are the people that are making housing so much worse in Australia? These are the people who are charging a 30 per cent premium on housing in Australia, making the Australian dream disappear from sight. This is another example of the government's twisted priorities and their fidelity to being a government for vested interests.

Ultimately, it comes down to a trifecta of failings on housing. There's the CFMEU tax of 30 per cent. Labor has also presided over enormous inflationary pressures in the housing sector. Rents went up by seven per cent in the last dataset. And then there has been a litany of failures on the housing policy itself. There has been a reshuffle of the ministry in recent weeks, which has seen a new housing minister come into play, but the new housing minister has the same problem as the old housing minister in that she has committed to the same failed policies.

The Australian Housing Future Fund, which is a multibillion-dollar boondoggle, has built no houses but spent millions of dollars on administration. Then you've got the housing targets, which will be 200,000 or 300,000 houses short because of ballooning costs, an inability to get skills and a range of other factors. You have a complete failure on supply. You cannot solve this housing challenge without building more houses, and Labor's two supply policies on the housing targets and the Housing Australia Future Fund have both failed.

Then you look at what Labor have offered on the demand side to help first home buyers. They've offered this bizarre shared-equity scheme, which has mostly been offered by state governments for years. It has been extremely unpopular; in fact in some states they've been abolished by state Labor governments. No-one wants to live in a country where the government owns half your house so that is why they've been very unpopular policies. And that is all the government is offering. Oh, there is one more policy: a tax cut for foreign fund managers to build build-to-rent houses.

The government have waved the white flag on supply. They've waved the white flag on trying to level the playing field, or tilt the playing field, for first home buyers. And their remaining tax policy here is one that seeks to give a tax cut to Vanguard, Black Rock and even maybe Cbus if they can find a way to structure themselves as a foreign fund manager. With Wayne Swan at the helm maybe they'll find a way to do that, but that is where we are on housing. It has been an absolute disaster in terms of the policy; a disaster in terms of rampant inflation, which Australia has almost uniquely in the Western world, in the liberal democratic world; and a disaster in terms of this 30 per cent premium from Labor's best friends in the unions, which is causing the cost of construction to be uneconomic in so many cases.

Ultimately, young people will work this out. Young people will work out that, unless the country is going to find a way to build more houses, then the housing crisis will never be solved. With the CFMEU running the government, the Labor Party will never be able to solve Australia's housing crisis. What that means for young people is that the Australian dream will be further and further away. Why does it have to be the case? All because Labor has an internal problem where it must run its government for some narrow vested interests. If only Labor could think about the long-term interests of the nation and think about what's important to people, not what's important to the union movement, the CFMEU and the like, then I actually believe that they would be able to solve this. But this is a structural problem that the government have. They only get out of bed every day for these rent seekers. They are making housing a nightmare in Australia. This bill is a starting point. We think it should be improved. In any event, it needs to be dealt with very quickly because the nation cannot afford to pay for this 30 per cent premium on housing any longer. Young people can't afford it, and the lead time to building houses is so significant that the 30 per cent premium staying there for any longer than it needs to means that that Australian dream is just going to disappear out of sight.