James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Cyber Security) Share this | Hansard source

The questions everyone in this building wants answered are: Has the deal been done? Have Senator Watt and the Prime Minister swallowed their pride and come to the table to agree to the sensible recommendations the coalition has made to approve this deal? We don't know.

We don't know whether Senator Watt and the Prime Minister have admitted that they were wrong to put forward the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024, a bill with so many holes in it that it looked like it was drafted by John Setka. We don't know yet whether or not Senator Watt and the government have agreed to fix up the errors of drafting they made in the bill, which left holes so wide you could drive a truck through them. We don't know whether Senator Watt or the Prime Minister have agreed to actually put in place a tough administrator who can do the job of cleaning up the CFMEU.

What we do know is that the government have conceded their own bill was so flawed that they are moving amendments themselves to fix up legislation they introduced into the parliament only last week. What we know is that some of the suggestions put forward by Senator Cash and the coalition have been agreed to in principle by the government, but we're waiting to see the drafting to make sure that they give effect to the intention of the coalition in putting forward these amendments.

These are very reasonable amendments. These amendments make sure that the bill achieves its intended purpose of fixing up the squalid, corrupt and criminal CFMEU. For example, they include backdating the retrospectivity to a date that actually allows the administrator to get to the problem of this matter. They provide for the administrator to have accountability to parliament on an ongoing and regular basis. They include removing the arbitrary five-year limit on disqualifications from office. They include making sure the administrator has the power to expel officers, delegates and employees who consort with criminal organisations. They include the administration taking at least three years, not a maximum of three years, before the administrator or indeed the minister can vary or revoke the scheme. They include commitments to ensuring political donations and political expenditure from the CFMEU are banned during the period of the administration. They include allowing the administrator to compel assistance from any person who's relevant to assisting the administration of the union. They include a fit and proper person's test. They include allowing the administrator to investigate the past practices of the CFMEU and other important matters. The only reason you'd be opposed to these sensible amendments put forward by the coalition is if you weren't genuine about cleaning up the CFMEU.

The government says it has finally seen the light. After years of carrying water for the CFMEU, doing their business in this place, running a protection racket for the CFMEU and allowing them to continue their criminal and corrupt wrongdoing, finally the straw has broken the camel's back. Finally the government realises that, after all, maybe there is something wrong with the CFMEU. But it shouldn't have taken the reporting by Nick McKenzie and his colleagues at the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Financial Review and 60 Minutes to have revealed this. We have all known for years about this conduct of the CFMEU. Indeed, that's why the former coalition government had a royal commission into the union movement. That's why the former government introduced the Australian Building and Construction Commission; that's why the former government introduced the Registered Organisations Commission; that's why the former government tried to legislate an ensuring integrity bill: to hold union officials to the standard the public would expect they meet. And yet, on every one of those questions, at every step of the way, those opposite fought those measures.

The Labor Party did the bidding of the CFMEU, their paymaster—to the tune of $6 million under Mr Albanese's leadership—to defend the interests of the CFMEU against the interests of the public. What have the consequences of that been? The CFMEU have got even worse than they were just a few years ago. Organised criminal elements have infiltrated this organisation. Organised crime has gone all the way to the highest levels of the CFMEU. That should come as a surprise to no-one. This is no longer just an industrial matter. This is not a union matter. This is not a question of an ideological issue. This is an issue of law and order, community safety and national security. This government says, in its own defence, that, when it abolished the ABCC and the Registered Organisations Commission, it had to do so because they weren't effective in tackling these issues. If their genuine concern about the operations of the ABCC and the Registered Organisations Commission was that they were not effective in dealing with the problems of the CFMEU, the remedy for that was increased powers, increased resources and more support for the ABCC and the ROC, not to abolish them entirely and put the feckless and hopeless Fair Work Ombudsman and Fair Work Commission on the beat. How many cases have the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Fair Work Commission taken against the CFMEU in the last two years since the ROC and the ABCC were abolished? How many actions have they taken to clean up the CFMEU, to make sure that the law was being upheld? We all know the answer to that question. The number of actions that they have taken is the number of actions that those opposite intended for them to take—which was zero.

When I first got in this place, I sat in Senate estimates on the Employment and Education Legislation Committee. I remember Labor senators, during our time in government, coming in, time and time again, to those estimates sessions to relentlessly bully, intimidate and try to scare the public servants appointed to run the ABCC and the ROC. Former senator Doug Cameron was a particularly notorious practitioner of this art. He pursued them at every turn and at every opportunity, and it was very clear what this was designed to do. It was designed to frustrate them and prevent them from doing their jobs. It was designed to scare them and to intimidate them because Doug Cameron was running a protection racket for the CFMEU. He did not want his mates in the CFMEU to be subject to the oversight and the constraints of either the Registered Organisations Commission or the ABCC. He didn't want the endemic cultural problems of bullying and corruption in the building industry to be exposed by these bodies—and expose them they did.

According to documents tendered in court by the Fair Work Commission, since 2003 the CFMEU has been the subject of findings of contraventions of federal workplace laws on more than 1,500 occasions, plus there have been 1,100 contraventions by its office holders, employees, delegates and members, resulting in $24 million in fines. There are so many quotes from justices who sat on these cases during that period that go to the recidivism of the CFMEU and the bad conduct of the CFMEU, and none of this was enough to move the Labor Party at the time. For example, Chief Justice Debra Mortimer said the CFMEU:

… weighs up the cost of engaging in such action—that is, likely prosecution and imposition of penalties—and nevertheless concludes it is a collateral cost of doing its industrial business.

The evidence suggests this ongoing behaviour is tolerated, facilitated and encouraged by all levels of the organisation.

There are many others, who've said many other similar things.

As fun as this morning's brief interlude of focusing some attention on our friends on the crossbench and the Greens for their complicity in defending the CFMEU was—I still cannot understand why they intend to stand in the way of the passage of this bill when even the Labor Party has given up the ghost and stopped defending the CFMEU—the truth is that, on their own, the Greens and the other member of the crossbench sympathetic to the CFMEU can't do anything to defend the CFMEU's interest. They needed a party in crime to do that. They needed the Labor Party to be willing participants in that. Over the last few years, they've had that. They've had that in the Labor Party's willingness to take $6 million of donations on Mr Albanese's watch from the CFMEU, despite all of the issues raised. They've had that in votes in this place, whether it's on an ensuring integrity bill or the abolition of the ABCC and the Registered Organisations Commission. I won't be so impolite as to name them in this place, but I hope those members of the Senate crossbench, who are not members of the Greens or the Labor Party, reflect on the role that they played in preventing the passage of the ensuring integrity bill and reflect on the role they played in passing the ABCC and ROC abolition. This includes those so-called teals in the other place, who voted to abolish these bodies and who are now out there saying, 'Why isn't the government doing more to tackle corruption and criminality in the building industry?' If only they had listened to the warnings made by the coalition, by the building industry and by many justices of the federal courts and supreme courts around our country, who warned repeatedly about the behaviour of the CFMEU.

I myself have read into the Hansard in Senate estimates over the years repeated instances of misogynistic and sexist bullying by CFMEU officials and delegates on building sites toward female construction employees, industry employees and female public servants. That wasn't enough for the defenders of women on the crossbench, the Greens or the Labor Party to stand up. We've all seen the very serious allegations being raised about this union over years and years. The truth is: finally the jig is up. Finally, a threshold has been crossed. Finally, John Setka and his mates have done something that even the Labor Party cannot abide, yet it appears that their colleagues and friends in the Greens are willing to abide by it.

This step today is only a first step; let's be really clear. We have very grave concerns about whether an administrator can fix this problem at all and whether in fact the CFMEU is reformable. It appears that the CFMEU's conduct in recent years is core to its business model. It's how it operates. Not all unions operate like this. We're not here today talking about special legislation to put an administrator in for the nurses federation or many other legitimate, respectable unions who represent their members and their interests. We are here talking about the CFMEU because core to their business is intimidation and relying on criminal elements to carry out their business on workplaces to intimidate building companies to go along for the ride and pay money to them. There are very real questions about whether a KC or a public servant appointed by the Fair Work Commission or the government could actually fix this problem of whether the CFMEU is reformable. The government should have, first, deregistered the CFMEU, as we've called on them to do. Second, they should bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Third, they should bring back the Registered Organisations Commission. Fourth, they should support our ensuring integrity bill, which we will, of course, provide them an opportunity to do before this debate has concluded.

It is critical that this is not just a bandaid. It is critical that, after passing this administrator, the government doesn't just wash its hands, walk away and say: 'Mission accomplished; job done. CFMEU is reformed.' We all know, as the BLF reared its ugly head again, the CFMEU will rear its ugly head again unless it's properly dealt with by the Commonwealth parliament—unless it's provided for in legislation that deals with not just the current issues and the current leadership of the CFMEU but the structural, cultural and endemic issues that have led to the CFMEU operating its business the way it does. It is incumbent on every party in this chamber to commit to this course of action—to cleaning up this industry—to commit to no longer taking money from this corrupt and criminal organisation, and to commit to fixing these problems.

At the end of the day, these have real and tangible impacts for the Australian people. It is no wonder that, in this country, we cannot deliver an infrastructure project at the state or federal level without massive blowouts. It turns out that we've been paying ghost workers of the CFMEU, who don't even turn up to work but get paid nonetheless to line the coffers of the CFMEU. It's no wonder that state taxes around this country, whether it's property taxes in my home state of Victoria or elsewhere, are rising, to meet those black holes in infrastructure blow-outs we've seen on the watch of the Allan government and the Andrews government in Victoria, for example. It's also no wonder that housing has become so unaffordable, when every first home buyer is paying a CFMEU tax on their first home, on their apartment. Credible experts have placed this CFMEU premium as up to 30 per cent of the cost of the build. When young homeowners are struggling to save, to build a deposit to buy their first home, when they're struggling with the 12 interest rate increases on this government's watch, it adds a special insult to injury that one of the reasons why they're paying more than they should is that the CFMEU was tolerated and buttressed and supported by this government and by the Labor Party for so many years.

Make no mistake, this is a cost-of-living issue, and, if those opposite are sincere about alleviating the very serious cost-of-living crisis we're facing in this country, then they'll take real action to reform the CFMEU, real action to reform the building industry, real action to tackle the criminality and corruption that's emerged on their watch, rather than just wiping their hands of it after they've appointed an administrator after the bill is, hopefully, agreed by the chamber this week.