Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my colleague Senator Bragg for bringing this to our attention. I too will speak about the transparency and integrity issues in relation to this. But I want to draw the chamber's attention to the fact that we have a school group upstairs watching this at the moment. It drew me to the website of the Parliamentary Education Office, where it talks about the role of the Senate. I'll read briefly; it will only take a moment. 'In the Senate, the work of the government is scrutinised.' That means 'closely examined'. I think that's something really important for us to think about in relation to Senator Bragg's order for the production of documents. If we can't have an environment where we can seek information in this place so that we can understand and ask questions, then we have a serious problem in our democracy. That is why we are here.

I want to go over some interesting facts; they've been spoken about, but I want to run through them. Cbus has some 920,000 members and manages $94 billion that belongs to those members. For 18 months, the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and Cbus have been trying to keep secret the information that Senator Bragg has been seeking. Former Treasurer Wayne Swan is the chair of Cbus. The disgraced CFMEU owns 21 per cent of Cbus—we're getting some dots to connect—and don't forget that Wayne Swan is also the Labor Party president and was Treasurer Chalmers's former boss and mentor. Together, they have worked very, very hard to keep this information out of the public eye, and we have to ask ourselves why that is the case. But even more importantly, they claimed that it was commercial-in-confidence and that there was an important reason that the Senate couldn't know—because the information was private to Cbus—rather than being transparent with the Australian public and with Cbus's 920,000 members. Why? What didn't they want us and Senator Bragg to know? It was that Cbus wanted special treatment, to not be transparent in their fees and costs disclosures to their 920,000 members or to anyone else who wanted to be a member.

What comes next? Wayne Swan has publicly committed $500 million of Cbus funds to co-invest in the HAFF. Should taxpayer funds be put at risk by co-investment with an organisation that is 21 per cent owned by the CFMEU? That's an important question that we need to address here.

The last thing that I want to point to is the cost of building in this country during a housing and rental crisis. The CFMEU has made housing more unaffordable by imposing an effective 30 per cent tax on apartment buildings. They are the last people who should be helping this government with housing—or any government, for that matter. The Australian people expect that we will protect their funds and hold this government accountable. That is why we are here. This government promised transparency and integrity, and they have broken that promise. They should be held to account for that.

I want to finish by responding to a couple of comments from the other side, particularly as they relate to what women want and the protection of women's superannuation. I acknowledge that the largest growing cohort of homeless in this country is women over 55, and that is shameful. I have this question: why is a woman in her 50s not allowed to access her own money—her own super—to purchase a home to have stability in her housing, but once she reaches retirement age she can spend that super to pay rent to somebody else? Can somebody explain that to me? You can't use your own money to invest in your own home, but, when the time comes, you can pay it out to a corporate or institutional landlord and be beholden to them. That is shameful.