Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024. I have to say that, when I first saw this peace of legislation and read my briefing notes that were supporting it, my mind went back to that 1980s advertisement that said: 'What's the drink that you have when you're not having a drink? A Claytons.' My mind immediately went to Claytons because it has become such a ubiquitous part of our language, off the back of that advertisement. I was looking for something different, but the reality was I found exactly what I was looking for.

The situation we find ourselves in today is the government purport that this piece of legislation is all about resolving a series of problems that, they say, they had no idea of. They had no idea of what was happening within this union despite the legal cases, despite the convictions, despite the fines, despite everything else that had been going on, despite the work of the ABCC. We have had from Labor, and from the Greens to a certain extent, a conga line of Sergeant Schultzes who have come out to say: 'We know nothing. There is nothing to see here.'

Repeatedly, over a continuous period of time, the Labor Party have defended the CFMEU and its actions. Why is that? Why have Labor members come out on a continuous basis and defended the actions of the CFMEU? It's really quite simple. Because the CFMEU are Labor. They are part of the labour movement. They fund the labour movement. They preselect and determine who comes to this place and the other place on the other side of the building.

Of course Labor members defend and deny the illegal activities of the CFMEU, and only when they are dragged screaming and kicking do they come to this place with what I genuinely believe is, as it is currently drafted, little more than a clayton's solution to the issues we see in the construction industry today, perpetrated by the CFMEU senior membership. Why do I say that? Quite simply, because everything that Labor have done during this term of parliament has been to facilitate the actions of the CFMEU, to accommodate the wishes of the CFMEU. They abolished the ABCC at the bequest of the CFMEU, the one organisation in this country whose role was to ensure, or to attempt to ensure, that operations within the building and construction industry were conducted within the law. So one of the first things that Labor did was to take away that instrumentality.

But then what did Labor do? They then adjusted the industrial relations laws in this country to take them back to what they were in the 1970s, to return pattern bargaining, a facilitative tool for the CFMEU. I know because I saw it when I was working in the construction industry in the 1970s and eighties, before the Hawke and Keating governments brought in the accord, which allowed employers and employees to sit down, to work together, to enterprise bargain for the benefit of both the employer and the employee. This government took that away and brought back the processes that supported the BLF in the 1970s and now support and facilitate the CFMEU today.

This government laid the ground rules. This government set the framework for the disgraceful behaviour that we are seeing. This government defended the officials. They denied that they saw anything wrong. That conga line of Sergeant Schultzes walked out and denied that there was illegal activity or that there was anything wrong going on in the CFMEU until it came to the point where they had no choice. The evidence was so stark. In fact, it was so stark that the leader of the CFMEU himself decided his position was no longer tenable.

But they continue to deny that there's a problem. The leadership of the CFMEU write to us, as members and senators, and say, 'We can sort all this stuff out ourselves.' I know what the Labor Party would say if a large business said: 'We'll sort this out. We'll do this ourselves.' In fact, I saw it during recent Senate inquiries. 'How can you possibly trust someone to investigate themselves?' was the line that was being run by Labor members. And yet that's what the CFMEU is saying today. Admittedly, the CFMEU don't want this legislation passed, which I have to say, to start with, is one incentive for me to support it and for the opposition to support it. But it needs significant improvement. Who on earth believes that the illegal activity and the corruption that exist within the CFMEU are going to be resolved within three years? Who believes that? This is accepted behaviour. This is the way the labour movement works. This is the way that the government has legislated it, to support the way the union movement works. It's part of their DNA. It's who they are. So this legislation needs serious amendment.

Minister Cash has proposed 20 amendments to see the opposition support the passing of the legislation. Minister Watt has been out there saying, 'Things are going well; we're close to agreement.' There he stands with his glass of Claytons and dry, clinking his glass with the Prime Minister, saying, 'Negotiations are going well, Prime Minister,' apart from the fact that they're not. There is no agreement with the opposition in relation to the amendments that we're seeking on this legislation. And the government needs to genuinely come to the table if it wants, as it says, to see this legislation passed quickly. It needs to genuinely take up the amendments that have been proposed by the opposition to support the passing of this legislation.

But the government also needs to take a deeper look at what it has done during its term, because it is now the facilitator of this sort of activity—not only in the CFMEU; any union can pull the same tactics now, because the government is the enabler. The government is the enabler of this disgraceful behaviour. And they should take a close look at what they have done—supported by the Greens and the crossbench, I must say. They have taken the money. They have denied the existence of illegal activity. They have been preselected and supported by members of the CFMEU to be here. They should look to the people who they should be serving—the Australian people—in terms of having a decent industrial relations framework to support lawful activity within the construction industry.

On what basis should Australian taxpayers pay 30 to 40 per cent more because the CFMEU have a union deal on a particular project? Why should we pay a CFMEU tax because a union is involved in a government project? We're talking schools. We're talking roads. We're talking bridges. We're talking vital infrastructure that supports our economy. If the CFMEU is involved in those projects, we have to pay 30 to 40 per cent more for the privilege of having them involved, and then the union gets to determine who the contractor might be and who the subcontractors might be because they've got a deal with the head contractor that the subcontractors have to have a union deal to be on the project. Then they start milking the project. The CFMEU tax starts getting paid, which is then filtered back to the Labor Party and to the Greens. That's what the Labor Party has enabled. That is the behaviour that has been supported by the actions of this government, yet the minister goes out publicly to say: 'Negotiations are going fine. We're progressing well.' What he doesn't say is that there is agreement on zero of the 20 items that have been put before the minister in relation to this matter.

This government needs to come to its senses. Not only does it need to deal with the illegal activity within the CFMEU—this legislation does start that process, but, as it stands, it is woefully inadequate; it is a piece of Clayton's legislation—but it also needs to look very closely at the broader industrial relations framework within this country so that we can get back to a situation where an employer and an employee can sit down together and work out how they're going to work and operate in that business without having the imposition of a union to do their work for them. In some cases, it might be very appropriate.

I'm not someone who's anti-union at all. I've had the opportunity to work very collaboratively with many unions over my time both in the business community and in this place. But we don't need standover tactics. We don't need illegal activity. We don't need behaviour like we've seen from the CFMEU, and we don't need a government, like this one, that is an enabler of that sort of behaviour and has legislated to create the situation that we see today by removing institutions such as the ABCC and legislating to bring back things like pattern bargaining, which support the thuggish, illegal behaviour of these unions. And, all the time, the government keeps taking the money, and so do the Greens. They continue to take the money, and, on many occasions, they trot out the Sergeant Schultz line: 'I didn't know anything about this. I know nothing.' It's about time they genuinely came to the table.