Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start my remarks by putting on record my support for trade unions in this country and the work that they do. I mentioned in my first speech to this chamber that trade unions play an important role in our nation and they've done great things for workers, over many years, in Australia. I've been happy to work with many trade unions on various issues—most recently with the Transport Workers Union. There are some very good people, like Michael Kaine, in that union. I worked closely with the Australian Workers Union on manufacturing issues and with Mr Daniel Walton, when he led it up. I worked very closely with the MEU of the CFMEU, the mining division, when I was resources minister, and over the years I've been happy to campaign alongside mining union members for things like the New Hope coalmine. I recognise that the mining union have largely separated themselves from the rest of the CFMEU because of the issues that are needing to be tackled within the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024.

It's very regrettable that we are at this stage and are having to fix something long after the issues have been widely known across the country. It is somewhat a mess of this government's making. They came to government and abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission, a commission that was clearly needed because the construction arm of the CFMEU was openly flouting the law, time and time again. This was well before any of their more salacious issues and the recent reports around criminal gangs and mafia-like connections to the CFMEU. But for years the construction division of the CFMEU has been openly flouting court orders, refusing to rein in their law-breaking tactics on workplaces and effectively seeing the millions of dollars of fines that have been imposed on them because of those criminal breaches as some sort of cost of doing business.

That was very clear. It's been clear, and it was not like the Australian Building and Construction Commission had nothing to do; they were constantly trying to fight back against this organisation that seemingly had no interest in abiding by the law. This was all known. Everybody knew this, and that's why people like the mining union have desperately sought to separate themselves from the construction arm. The forestry division is, I think, trying to do the same. People wanted to run a million miles from the construction arm of the CFMEU, even within the trade union movement.

Yet then we had Anthony Albanese elected Prime Minister, and, quite the opposite from what these other trade unions were doing, he rushed to embrace these law-breaking elements of the trade union movement. The Labor Party has taken $6.2 million in donations from the CFMEU since Anthony Albanese became leader. How do they explain that? We all knew this. We all knew they were breaking the law, yet the Labor Party were happy to be funded by people that were openly breaking the law.

Most of our issues with this bill—we support the overall intent of doing something here; something has to be done, clearly—are with the simple fact that it's hard to trust a government that has been so closely tied to and financed by an organisation that it now tells us it'll rein in. They can be trusted, apparently, to re-impose a level of law and order on this element of the trade union movement. I don't think it's unreasonable for those of us outside the Labor Party to just be a little bit cynical about that and to say, 'Look, can we really trust a workplace relations minister who's just been appointed and who for years was the attack dog for the CFMEU in Senate estimates and in going after people like Senator Cash who are trying to hold this law-breaking organisation to account?' That's what Senator Watt did time and time again over the last decade, and now he gets up and has the temerity to say: 'Now you can trust me. Give me almost omnipotent authority to re-establish law and order.' I don't believe that for a second. I think what we really need here is proper accountability for this and ongoing accountability—not just in this sitting fortnight, not just while the glare of the media spotlight is shining brightly on these issues. We need accountability over many years to re-establish some level of law and order in this element of the trade union movement.

This bill doesn't do that, because, as I was alluding to, this bill gives the minister enormous authority to do whatever he chooses to do, with almost zero parliamentary accountability. I'll go to some of the specifics later, but the general point here can be highlighted by the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, this bill exempts a variety of ministerial decisions made under the bill from disallowance. I'll explain to the average person what that means. Normally, the default provision is that, when a minister makes a decision under the delegated authority provided to him or her by legislation, there is always the ability of either chamber of the parliament to disallow that decision if they choose to do so. If a minister made a decision, say, on a certain amount of where fishing could occur in the oceans under legislation, either chamber could pass a resolution to disallow that decision under the default provisions of the way regulations work in this country.

This bill says:

An instrument made under subsection (1) is a legislative instrument but section 42 (disallowance) of the Legislation Act 2003 does not apply …

Why? For what rationale at all can there be a justification that the minister does not want to be accountable to a disallowance motion by either chamber? There's no rationale for that at all. Sometimes, there's a rationale for that if the decision is of a national security nature or has to be made urgently and any kind of hold up by the parliament might create issues, but this is not one of those issues. This has been festering for years. It's hardly been something of urgent attention for this government. There is no reason why the parliament shouldn't have that review mechanism that it normally retains to be able to disallow a minister 's decision.

This is just a power grab. That's what it is. It's a power grab. It's criminal activity, exposed criminal activity, and a crisis now in the construction sector being used and abused by this government to just grab more power and to try to do so under the distortion that they are actually doing something good for our national interest. It's absurd. So that should be changed. That's a very simple change. At the very least, there would be some level of parliamentary accountability there.

There are also some other things that we should clearly do. After everything that we know now, why doesn't this bill ban the CFMEU from making political donations? That seems to make some sense, and it raises questions if the government doesn't want to do it. Why don't they want to do that? They are not going to give the money back, apparently. Again, if they really want to be trusted, if they really want to convince the Australian people that the very people who were the closest to the CFMEU can now be trusted to rein in this fox and protect the hens, give the money back. Give back the $6.2 million that the Labor Party received from the CFMEU since Anthony Albanese became leader. It's tainted money now, clearly. It's been tainted by crime. Give it back.