Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry (Restoring Integrity and Reducing Building Costs) Bill 2024 (No. 2). This bill shows what the Liberal-National agenda for the building industry is all about. It's not about making the industry more productive. It's not about stamping out corruption or lawlessness. It's not about protecting working conditions. It's not about making construction sites safer. This bill shows that their agenda is about one thing and one thing only. It's about taking advantage of allegations that are already been dealt with by administrators. It's about taking advantage of the situation to attack the rights of construction workers. It's about de-unionising the industry by force. Workers aren't allowed to have a voice at work; that's the view they have on the opposition side. They want to shut down a voice as much as they can. I'll come to the evidence of that, because they were a party to it through the entire instalment of the ABCC. People aren't allowed to bargain for better pay and conditions. They aren't allowed to speak up when there are safety issues. That's what the ABCC was about. That's what they're about. That is what this is about.

Let's be clear about what this bill would actually do if it were passed by this place. Construction is one of the deadliest industries in Australia. Twenty-two construction workers died in 2022. But I guess, for those opposite and their cheerleaders, and some in the construction industry, that isn't enough, because they want to get rid of the one organisation that specialises in making work sites safer and fairer in the construction industry. The bill will result in more deaths. It will make construction jobs less safe and more deadly.

Specifically, this bill revives a disgraced, discredited organisation, the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The ABCC is a law enforcement agency set up to go after the political enemies of the Liberal and National parties. It's the kind of agency you'd expect in Putin's Russia—not in a democratic state like Australia. Just look at the state of the shonks and grifters they put in charge of it, like Nigel Hadgkiss. The first bloke those opposite put in charge of the ABCC had to resign in disgrace. He was found by the federal court to have engaged in 'serious contraventions of law that were required to police'. The court went on to say, 'The consequence of his conduct was dissemination by the commission at his direction of false information to the industry of which the commission was not only the regulator but supposedly a trustworthy source of reliable information.' The bloke those opposite put in charge, supposedly to clean up the construction industry, was breaking the very laws he was supposed to police. You just can't make this stuff up.

It would almost be worth letting the ABCC go through so we could see the shortlist Senator Cash has in her pocket of the psychopaths she would put in charge at this time. She'd demand these sort of people run this sort of organisation. The ABCC spent half-a-million dollars on legal action to stop a Eureka flag being flown on a building site, when the developer, Lendlease, didn't even have an issue with it. No-one—the union, workers or developer—supported the ABCC action. It was an ideological farce. Some of the other famous wastes of money the ABCC embarked on, with the full support of the Liberals and Nationals, include prosecuting the CFMEU for having COVID-19 safety posters in break rooms. Can you believe it? There was a common interest and a common goal, but no—they wanted them prosecuted, because the posters had the union and the employer association logos on the bottom. Heaven forbid! They launched cases about union stickers on hard hats. They launched cases about union officials having a cup of tea on a work site. In that case, Justice North said:

… it was "astounding" that commissioner Nigel Hadgkiss had briefed silk and conducted days of hearing with dozens of participants, including Australian Federal Police, over "such a miniscule, insignificant affair."

Justice North went on to say about the ABCC, 'Using public resources to bring the bar down to this level really calls into question the exercise of the discretion to proceed.' My personal favourite is the half-a-million dollars the ABCC spent on a losing High Court appeal in the case about the CFMEU requesting that a women's bathroom be put on a work site. That they spent half-a-million dollars on the most absurd cases designed to bully and intimidate workers from organising or participating in union activity is astonishing.

This bill would also result in the building code being re-established. The laws made compliance with the building code mandatory for the building companies and contractors tendering for or performing government-funded work. What did companies have to comply with? The bill banned companies from having enterprise-containing provisions covering, for example, apprenticeship ratios on worksites. How about that? We have a housing crisis created by those opposite, and one of their brilliant ideas was to ban requirements for apprentices on construction sites. Now we have a shortage of skilled construction workers. Between 2012 and 2020, apprenticeship numbers dropped from 376,000 to 134,000. That's a 64 per cent decrease in apprenticeship numbers in eight years under those opposite. I can't blame it all on the building code, because those opposite also did a very good job of gutting our TAFE system. But the building code definitely played a major role. Next time you can't find a builder for a home, remember those opposite introduced a ban on agreements on apprenticeship numbers at worksites, which happened between employers and unions. Even in the midst of a housing crisis, they're trying to bring it back. Isn't it brilliant? How smart! Aren't they clever! Don't let a union-busting, workplace-busting, worker-busting policy get in the way of their ideology.

The code also made it illegal to have terms in contracts about job security and ensuring contractors or labour hire workers won't earn less than the same pay they would earn under the agreement. To put it simply, the code was about lower wages, lower conditions and lower standards in the industry, because the Liberals and Nationals are all about lower wages and lower conditions. They see an opportunity and they just can't help themselves. That's their deliberate economic plan. They have very few, but they have one very clear plan.

The Liberals and Nationals hate it when working people earn a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, but they particularly hate it when working Australians earn well in certain industries, like the construction, maritime or mining industries. What do these industries all have in common? They have a strong union presence. It turns out that, in industries where you have strong unions, workers get a better deal. The only thing the Liberals and Nationals hate more than wage rises is strong unions making those wage rises possible, because those opposite are put in this building by very specific vested interests. These vested interests are the reasons the Liberals and too many of the Nationals are so anti wages and anti workers.

Let's take Senator Bragg, whose contribution I was listening to. You don't have to dig deep to find Senator Bragg's vested interests. Before he was elected to the Senate, he was a policy director of a lobby group for the financial sector and he was a director of the Business Council—the lobby group for business. Those are the groups that put up Senator Bragg here. Now, on behalf of the Business Council, he spends all his time attacking unions and workers' rights. On behalf of the financial sector lobby, he spends the rest of his time attacking industry super funds. That's why we have the same old tired arguments about the ABCC this time. The only thing preventing those opposite from gutting the wages and conditions of construction workers again are the Labor Party and construction unions.

I look forward to the construction industry having a strong and effective union again, because we've made practical changes in this place to deal with the issues of concern that we all hold—the legislation that we had to drag people on the opposite side, kicking and screaming, to turn around and support. We had to drag them, regardless of the industry backing us and the good people in the union movement backing us. Unlike this mob opposite, the good employers, the good unions, the good workers, the good leadership and the people in the construction industry were backing the changes that we put in place. Yet those opposite came up with this half-baked, half-stupid and obviously completely intended attack on workers and unions.

To listen to Senator Bragg, the crypto kid, talk about what should be happening with superannuation is amusing, because Cbus wins award after award for its performance, its engagement and its results. It invests in the construction industry to make sure there are construction jobs, and heaven forbid that it might even expect those construction jobs to be safe. That's what those opposite are against. They're against not only the mission statement but also the practicalities of how safe workplaces come from proper investment.

I say this of the members of Cbus and others that invest in the construction industry and development. Those that are doing the right thing—and there are many companies out there that do—know the scoundrels they compete with. They're the mugs that those opposite turn around and support. That's the industry they want to drive us down to: one that's unsafe, has poor super arrangements and has poor contracting chains, and where supply chain, contractors and phoenixing is all over the place.

I have been in estimates time and time again and seen nothing done by the ABCC about wage theft and phoenixing of companies. I saw the horrendous nature of how they dealt with the hundreds of exploited Chinese workers in Tasmania. They were part of a deal with one player in the construction industry that's very close to those opposite and always speaks on their behalf. Guess what the ABCC did? They did nothing. They said they investigated and, regardless of the information and the public statements, when it came to prosecuting anybody, they dropped the prosecution. When they had an opportunity to right the wrongs for people that were exploited when they were brought into this country, they turned around and applauded the ABCC. They said what an effective organisation they were. They were defending them in estimates. They defend them in here. They defend them out there, because they are not about a fair playing field for good employers, not about a fair result for hard workers in this dirty, dangerous industry. I remember, when I think about the sixties and seventies, that is was the last industry you went into; you had to be desperate to go into that industry, because of the danger people were in. That's the industry that their policy will drive this back into. And do they care? Not one iota.

I know there are good people over there. But those good people are blinded by the ideology that drives them, about crushing the voice of working people. This is not about 22 individuals. This is about the idea of people having a voice in the construction industry and standing up. When that bill finally went through to make this industry better and put the administrator in, it was based on making sure there's still a voice in this industry—a voice for everybody, not just for somebody, not just the good players, not just the workers—and also make sure those bad employers are held to account.

I spent lots of years working in conjunction with the construction industry when I was, proudly, at the Transport Workers Union and with the owner-drivers who were getting ripped off time and time again by that construction industry—small business people who were putting their houses on the line, their trucking business on the line, not getting paid for months on end. Well, the actions taken by those workers, by those owner-drivers, in collective fights against some of those outrageous, bad employers and developers is something I stood by in those days, and I'll stand by it these days. If you don't turn around and have a strong workforce with good employers then you have the shonks, the rip-offs, the phoenixing—all the things that have made this industry the way it is. Don't forget: this industry environment is driven by that. That's what drives the problems we've had in this industry.

Now, we're taking care of the issues that we see as being important, that this Senate has supported, regarding making sure integrity is brought back into this industry. But put this bill they're putting forward into the dustbin. This is simply about going back to the bad old days. They just can't wait: 'Let's bring back the seventies!' 'Let's see the death rates increase!' 'Let's have less worker voice!' 'Let's let good employers rot!'— (Time expired)