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

Well, here we are again, in the Senate: instead of dealing in a sensible, calm, rational way through a government's legislative agenda, we're here having to mop up another mess of the government's own making. As senator after senator has made clear through the debate on this bill, this Labor government is a fully owned subsidiary of the union movement. It is a badge that they wear very proudly in this chamber and outside of this building, each and every day, and we know that the Australian Labor Party is the political arm of the Australian trade union movement, just like in the olden days when the Country Party was the political arm of the farmers in this country. That is a fact.

If you look at the most successful minister in the Albanese government over the last two years, it Minister Burke. He's got through this parliament every single thing the Australian trade movement has wanted. He's the most successful minister in this place, because he was elected and appointed with a wish list from not just the CFMEU but the ACTU, and he's delivered in spades for them.

Anyone that has served any period of time in the Senate and has sat, especially, on the Senate Standing Committees on Education and Employment, you will have heard ad nauseam, whether the coalition was in government or the Labor Party is in government, a litany, a rap sheet a mile long—anyone who's interested go to the Hansardof allegation, of court judgements of the behaviour of the CFMEU which makes unconscionable the surprise on the faces of so many in the Labor government on public revelations by the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Nine Network more generally, led by Nick McKenzie.What a surprise! It is like a bad kabuki. Honestly, where have you been?

And do you know what's galling? This is a complete comms strategy from the Labor government. If they feign surprise to the public, if they hurry and rush a flawed piece of legislation to look like they're doing something, the Australian public, who are being crushed by a cost-of-living crisis, will somehow forget that Labor owe their preselections to the CFMEU. You are not MPs, senators, ministers or prime ministers without being fully owned subsidiaries of your union movement.

Most Australians think the union movement is there to help the Australian worker to get better pay, conditions et cetera, to stand up for the workers in the workplace. But the tragedy of the union movement as it stands now is a lack of productivity and pushing an agenda that Bill Kelty, Bob Hawke and the late Simon Crean fought to overturn in their accord process, because Australians lose their jobs when private business goes bust. That's actually what happens. If you actually care about Australian workers, you want them in well-paid businesses where they can afford to pay their mortgage and rent and raise their families. That's actually what the workers paradise is supposed to be about in this country.

The tragedy of the union movement as it stands now in this country seems that the CFMEU is anything but a union that stands up for workers. Just ask Ben Nash, a young worker heading off to a job he loved, in civil construction, in my home state of Victoria. His mother has said:

She didn't know that the construction industry her son was entering was infested with underworld figures and cronyism, fuelled by crooked businesses and certain CFMEU officials who have formed an unholy alliance to control who works, and who doesn't …

Ben had worked for an Indigenous construction company. But guess what? It wasn't a CFMEU controlled construction company. And so, because young Ben rocked up to work one day, he was bullied, he was harassed and he was locked in a shed on site for hours. It is a tragedy for the party that is supposed to support workers to think it's okay somehow that their own preselection backers have people involved in their organisation that did this to a young Australian to the point where Ben committed suicide. He went home and didn't wake up the next morning. I think the construction industry's fantastic. I'm very lucky that a lot of people close to me are involved in it. And I think we need more young Australians doing apprenticeships and seeing themselves on site building the future of this country but for the fact that an Indigenous company that isn't a CFMEU controlled company therefore entitles the CFMEU officials on site to bully, harass and intimidate to the point where a kid commits suicide.

Let me not even go to the rap sheet of what women have been subjected to, not just by John Setka. Everyone wants to point out that Mr Setka is somehow the only bad apple, the only sexist, in the CFMEU. I have sat here as a conservative woman for years and have been lectured to by the Labor Party, by the Greens, but by the Labor Party in particular, about how the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and every single preselection season you turn a deaf ear to John Setka's sexism and the sexism that's embedded in the CFMEU. Those opposite don't care. It's okay. It means they get to be a senator for another six years. It means they get to be a minister in the next Australian Labor government. Well, you know what? A very smart man a few centuries ago said, 'When good people'—he actually said 'men', but let's say 'people' because it's the 21st century now—'don't stand up, bad stuff happens.' Just saying, 'It's okay. They're all not bad,' then coming in here and voting against our amendments to actually make sure criminals can't be union officials, somehow that's a bad policy?

The Australian public would be so devastated to know the party of the workers thinks it's okay for people with a rap sheet a mile long to be their local union officials. So what I would like to see in this parliament is every time a Labor Party minister or senator stands up and talks on industrial relations that they declare their conflict of interest. How about that? Declare which union sent you to this place so that people can judge the standard you choose to walk past, the standard you choose to say is okay. Because the conflict of interest is in your organisation, in your preselections—who gets to sit on your national executive and who doesn't, what policies get passed at your conference and what don't. That's your structure. Who gets to be a minister, an MP? It is not the Prime Minister's role and, let's be honest, it's not even caucus. You get a few phone calls the night before about who would be a good pick and it's all tied back to who your preselectors are.

For me as a shadow infrastructure minister, the inherent conflict of interest is also with your state premiers, who have signed up to publicly funded infrastructure projects where egregious behaviour is occurring and no-one is checking—no KPIs, let's just keep the funding going to make sure it's CFMEU-controlled proponents doing a cosy deal with tier-1 construction companies. You want to talk about cronyism? Talk about big government, big unions, big corporations, hand in glove, very cosy.

Guess who misses out? Ben Nash missed out. The Australian taxpayer misses out. Because guess what happened in the last budget? There was $10.1 billion shovelled out the door, not for one extra kilometre of road or rail, not an additional school or a hospital but for cost overruns. Five billion dollars went just to my home state of Victoria. Thank you so much, Premier Jacinta Allan, you did a great job for the CFMEU on the big build, overseen by Premier Andrews—$5 billion and not one extra kilometre. But that's okay because we don't need more doctors. We don't need more teachers. We don't need to be able to fund pay increases for aged-care workers and childcare workers; we just need to shovel it into the pockets of bikies and organised crime, and that's okay because you don't bother to tell the Australian public that's what is happening.

Everyone has known this has been going on and everybody is paying the price. The forestry division of the CFMEU has wanted out for years. Its members don't want to have these thugs destroying its reputation as a union that actually wants sustainable timber harvesting going on in rural and regional communities and employing people across the regions in what is the ultimate renewable resource, Australian timber. They have wanted out for years. They don't want to hang out with thugs and criminals. But guess what? The Labor Party got in and actually passed legislation to make sure they can't leave, even if they want to. Somehow, for the forestry division, it's like being in a bad marriage. Whitlam brought in no-fault divorce, but not if you are a division of the CFMEU. Foresters, you're going to be wedded to the construction division. Manufacturers, you're going to be wedded to the construction division.