Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Cash has just set out, there is a wall of money which goes from the union movement into the Labor Party's coffers. It's a wall of money which goes from the CFMEU but also its favourite tentacles, the super funds, and that has enriched the Labor Party. It has paid for its campaigning capacity for many decades and it has given it manpower at polling places and enormous internal power inside this building. Often it's unclear, when Labor members and senators give speeches in this place, whether they are speaking on behalf of the people that they seek to represent, or do represent, or whether they are speaking on behalf of a union they used to work for. It is very unclear who in fact they are trying to work for in this building, which is a howling conflict of interest and something that I think is eating away at the qualities of the Labor Party. It has been widely exposed by the media this year, and I think we all are in debt to the Sydney Morning Herald for its extraordinarily good investigative work, which has exposed all these issues. The reason that the parliament is considering these matters now is that the media have done outstanding work in exposing this wrongdoing.

What is the transaction here? The transaction for the CFMEU is that Cbus, First Super and BUSSQ—all these organisations—give their money through the union to Labor, and in return what do the CFMEU get? They get preferable policy settings. They are paid off in policy. One of the first actions of this government was to abolish the Building and Construction Commission. As has been canvassed before, the Building and Construction Commission was put in place by the Howard government because it was recognised that lawlessness was driving up costs and hurting Australians because of the inflated costs of building in this country.

Then, when the Gillard government came along, they sought to replace the ABCC with another body which was not as effective as the ABCC. The Turnbull government then sought to legislate the ABCC. It was stymied by the Senate, a double dissolution election occurred and the Turnbull government then legislated the ABCC with the support of One Nation, Derryn Hinch and the Xenophon team. Thank goodness for the crossbench of the day standing up for the good qualities of this parliament, which has one pretty clear job—to look after the Australian people and ensure that lawlessness is not something that is tolerated by the people in this building.

After 2,600 breaches of workplace laws and $24 million in penalties, the insertion of the CFMEU into enterprise agreements has a real consequence for the Australian people at a time when the Labor Party has presided over the largest growth in immigration since the 1950s and a collapse in building construction, a collapse in house building. So the nexus between bringing people into the country and building houses is in a terrible state. At that time they allowed the CFMEU to run rampant across building sites in this country, and the consequence of that has been a 30 per cent premium, a 30 per cent tax, on all apartment buildings and the like in this country wherever the CFMEU has been allowed to do business.

This 30 per cent tax means that housing, particularly apartment buildings, for so many Australians then become unaffordable. For many Australians who are living in the cities—bigger cities on the east coast, perhaps—the entry point for them into the Australian dream is going to be an apartment. So the deliberate inflation of apartment building costs by this government and its actions is a disgrace. It is hurting under-40s. When you look at opinion polls and you look at surveys of under-40s in this country, they are very angry about the housing situation, which has got so much worse under this government.

They should be angry, because the government is a government for vested interests and is running a protection racket for their best friends. They don't care. The Labor Party does not care that the Australian people have to pay a 30 per cent premium on a new apartment building because of the CFMEU. They would rather help out their favourite vested interests than look after the welfare of younger Australians. Unions are more important than young people to this Labor Party. That's where we find ourselves.

The lack of law and order has manifested in many places across our country. In relation to the Hakoah Club, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, this is a Jewish club that is being threatened by the CFMEU with pro-Palestinian protestors because of a dispute between Hakoah and its builder. This is the sort of activity the CFMEU is prepared to undertake. It is prepared to go into communities that are already very much under stress and strain and threaten them with all sorts of political and other measures, which is illuminating for this chamber to consider—the fact that you would threaten people who are already under siege with a particular form of sensitive protest in order to get an outcome. This has been shown in the good work of the Sydney Morning Herald, which has been able to canvass these matters in detail in recent weeks.

I want to take the opportunity here as well to flag something that it is very concerning to me about the tentacles of this organisation, the CFMEU. It is now in administration and has been described by the administrator as an organisation that even he was surprised was in such a terrible state, but the CFMEU is apparently still being led by its secretary, even though it's in administration, and still has very deep tentacles into this building.

I say to the chamber that a very risky precedent was set yesterday afternoon here in the Senate, when it voted against an inquiry into a matter which goes to the heart of all this—that is, that the CFMEU still owns 21 per cent of the super fund Cbus, and even though the administrator has kicked three CFMEU officials off the Cbus board they still own a large portion of the fund and exercise significant control as an owner of 21 per cent of the organisation that owns the Cbus fund. The bill before the Senate would ban the Cbus organisation from accessing taxpayer funds through the government's Housing Australia Future Fund. The reason that measure has been put forward by the coalition is we do not regard it as appropriate that the CFMEU should be allowed to use it surrogates, the Cbus super fund, to access taxpayer funds. That is a reasonably unremarkable concept—that taxpayer funds should be shielded from an organisation that has been found to be engaging in deeply corrupt activities. In fact, this parliament itself has put it into administration. So how can it be the case that the parliament thinks it's important enough to put the CFMEU into administration but is open to the CFMEU surrogates accessing taxpayer funds through the Housing Australia Future Fund through the Cbus organisation? The two things cannot be consistent in any form.

The bill before the Senate seeks to ban Cbus from accessing the housing fund while the CFMEU is in administration—an unremarkable concept. But the idea of having an inquiry into this bill was voted down yesterday by the Senate, and I think it is a very risky precedent. Our role here is to inquire and get to the bottom of things. Even if people don't agree with my comments today about these matters—and I understand there are different views—the concept of having an inquiry and doing investigative work, giving people parliamentary privilege when they are seeking it, being able to call in regulators to get to the detail of what they are doing in terms of protecting taxpayer funds and protecting the interests of members in compulsory schemes, is fairly unremarkable. Rather than asking this chamber to vote in a particular way on a substantive measure, we simply seek to have an inquiry into the bill.

I know there has been a significant amount of lobbying here to stop this bill going to an inquiry. I think it is a very dangerous precedent for the Senate, and I regret that some of the crossbench did not support the motion to refer the bill to a committee. I think the Australian people would expect us to conduct reasonable inquiries. I understand there are some things that are extremely sensitive that have not gone to committee inquiries before, for good reason, but when it comes to matters of probity and governance this is surely the core business of the Senate. I again urge my colleagues on the Senate crossbench—particularly the Greens, who have been very good generally in supporting measures that promote good probity and good governance in relation to these matters—to consider whether or not it is a good precedent for the parliament to vote to defeat an inquiry into a bill that seeks to prevent an organisation that is linked to an organisation under administration from accessing taxpayer funds.

The bill does not seek to put a blanket ban on an organisation forever; the bill seeks to put a ban on that organisation while the CFMEU is in administration. It is not a forever clause. So the idea of the crossbench voting against an inquiry, voting against investigation, voting against giving people parliamentary privilege, voting against bringing in the regulators to give evidence, voting against the idea of getting the detailed evidence that the Australian people would expect us to collect, is very dangerous. I again urge the crossbench to think carefully about the precedent it wants to set here. We have been sent to Canberra to get to the bottom of corruption, wrongdoing and malfeasance. There is certainly malfeasance happening with the CFMEU, otherwise the parliament would not have put the organisation into administration.

The crossbench should consider carefully the precedents that it seeks to make, because if we start voting against inquiries then I wonder what our role here is in Canberra at all. If we're not going to get to the bottom of things, then maybe it's not worth flying down here to the bush capital and wasting all these taxpayer funds—because I can assure you there's a lot of rubbish that goes on here.

There's the pantomime of question time, all the scripted answers and all the other rubbish, which are a huge waste of taxpayer funds. Who seriously thinks that getting up and asking two or three questions, with all the supplementaries, is good value, particularly the dorothy dixers? The Australian people see through it. I've made that point in government and in opposition. It is often an ugly place to be a part of because of the huge waste of taxpayer funds and resources, where people just get up and they read speeches. They read speeches with talking points on them. They've got no idea what they're saying. They're just here to fill up a few hours.

The real work of this Senate is done in the committees. I would say that any reasonable senator would agree that there is a level of collegiality that comes with the committee system that we inherited from the US in the early seventies which has given the Senate the best opportunity to make a contribution to Australia by developing policies, working together and getting to the bottom of things. I want to commend Senator Pocock, Senator O'Neill and Senator Colbeck for all their work on the PwC matter. They have exposed enormous wrongdoing in the corporate sector through the Senate committee system. If we didn't have the Senate committee system, I would really question the value of having this chamber, because there's not a lot of value that goes on here for the Australian people.

So I again urge the crossbench. It is a very dangerous precedent for the crossbench to vote against inquiries into issues of governance, probity, integrity and transparency. This is not about a culture war or some other sensitive issue. This is about the sorts of standards that people would expect us to apply to the protection of taxpayer funds. This is not a substantive motion. It's not a matter where you're being asked to nail your colours to the mast. It is asking the Senate to vote for a process which allows the Senate to undertake an inquiry and investigation. I conclude with those comments.