Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I really should coordinate better with my coalition and party colleagues when we sit here, as most of my talking notes were very similar to Senator Canavan's. When I get up here and talk about this bill, the Building and Construction Industry (Restoring Integrity and Reducing Building Costs) Bill 2024 (No. 2), I want to focus on that second part: reducing building costs. Many people sitting in here will say, 'Why do I care about the coalition beating up on a union? You know, this is politics. This is normal. It doesn't affect me. It doesn't worry me. It doesn't do anything like that.' But it's far more than that. This is about what Senator Canavan said: the very fact of being able to afford housing.

Housing is such a big debate in here. We hear government ministers stand up and throw barbs at the Greens in their corner and at us for not passing their bills that will put more money into the housing market and, no doubt, will make it easier for some 10,000 people to buy a home, but it will just give them a comparative advantage over the 10,000 people who were going to buy a home anyway but will no longer have that advantage. So it's just choosing who gets the home—nothing more. It's not building more homes and putting more people in homes. That is what this comes down to.

If you are in a major city where there are these apartment blocks and where there is heavy union influence, you are paying too much for your unit. The estimates are that the cost to get into your unit are 30 per cent higher, so you are paying more. That's a real cost to your pocket. That is a real cost for people trying to get into their first home, to get into their unit or to build these things. It is a housing supply thing. But what's not seen is the number of projects that don't go ahead and the number of builders who decide not to go ahead with a proposal and a development because it is no longer viable because of these costs. When they are saying, 'No, I won't go ahead with this apartment block,' or, 'No, I won't go ahead with this land development,' or, 'I won't go ahead with these things that would house people, these bedrooms that we would put people in at night,' it means more people stay homeless, and it means more people bid higher again. It means that, on top of the higher construction costs, people have to pay more for a lesser supply of housing out there.

If you're at home and you're concerned about the cost of housing, this has a direct impact on you. If we limit supply and we raise the cost of that supply, we will build less. It is simple economics, and the control of major projects that the CFMEU has shown over time has had that effect. Putting some more cash in the hand of others simply feeds this beast of industry, this beast of corruption, this beast of greed. What we need to do right across the spectrum is build more, build more quickly and develop more, and people who build bedrooms, create land and create homes are the solution, yet they are demonised in here.

Now, I will demonise some people straight after that. There are people in this industry who paid the bribes and the kickbacks and then relied on consumers to pay higher prices so that they could pay the union officials for the access and the right to sites. That is wrong. What this legislation is seeking to do is to bring in a policeman—a body that can try and catch some of that, but it will not catch all of that.

When we were talking about the bill to bring in the administrator, I spoke of seeing firsthand a video of a site manager being assaulted by union officials on a site in the Hunter Valley. I went to the developer and said, 'Do you want me to raise this?' and he said, 'No. I am told my building will never pass inspection if I cause a problem. I am told I will have safety breaches on my site every week if I raise this.' The point of the piece was that he would no longer have a problem on site if he didn't raise a problem with the assault of his site manager. I'm not sure what his site manager thought about that, but that is the deal that had to be done. If that is not basic corruption and criminality, I don't know what is.

And we heard from other speakers here that over 2,000 breaches have been found and over $24 million worth of fines have been levied. If this was in America, this would be a RICO case. This would be a criminal organisation, not a union. But, here, we had the perverse case of this government removing the policeman only to deal with the consequences of it months later. I spoke on that bill that night about it not being a problem of a union; it was a problem of the wrong people creeping into that union and not being dealt with. When you get criminals coming in, when you get corruption coming in, and you don't have the leadership strong enough to say no—a leadership so weakened that they say, 'Yes, come on in and create this thing'—that is what's wrong. When you don't have a policeman, this makes it worse.

Imagine watching a football game—I'm talking real football, rugby league, here, Senator Ciccone—where you take the referee off the field. When you take the referee off the field and say, 'Have at it,' you don't have a game; you have a farce. You have arguments. You have fights. You have everything wrong going on. And that is what we have here. They took the referee off the field in the ABCC. You at home might be saying, 'Why should it matter to me?' You pay more for everything.

Government is not great—we heard the senator—at building houses. Of course they're not. They're not great at doing anything. I went into my new office. I'm a new senator. I've only been here two years. They gave me a big, beautiful, empty space and said they'd develop it and put walls in and all these sorts of things over time. So I don't have an open space to allow people into our office, other than the front door, and then they've got access to everywhere. Just a mere 18 months after I came here, they got that done. I have a mate who's a shopfitter and does this professionally. They walked into our beautiful open space, looked up at the high ceilings—it's a heritage building—and said: 'This is an expensive shopfit. This is $250,000 to $300,000.' I said, 'Wow, that's expensive.' Of course, under our disclosures, all the expenses that go to our offices are disclosed. We don't have a say in it. Every senator will know here that they come in, they do what they do and it goes on your expense account, but you don't actually choose the contractor or the project.

But what happened when our budget finally happened? It's a lovely office. It has probably five or six internal walls, a slight refit of a bathroom and a few other things—a lot of data and cabling and a bit of security; I get that. But what did it cost? Our budget as a government is $800,000 for what a professional shopfitter says is $250,000 to $300,000. I have no doubt that will come up on my expense report as an extravagant office that I've asked for. But that is the process of government here. It is the process of involvement and red tape and everything we do and the cost being levied by the rules of those in power. I'm talking about not just unions but big business that paid these bribes because it was cushy. The ABCC should be able to come down on all of those people and say that is wrong. So, when you're at home and you're paying these extra expenses and you can't get a home, and we're bringing on all these people, and people are saying no to developments and no to bedrooms so more people remain homeless, that is a real problem.

And then we look at the infrastructure side of things. When they build your roads, when they build your dams, when they build your water infrastructure, when they build all of that, it's the same thing—30 per cent higher costs. So, if you're looking at $100 billion infrastructure pipeline—I think that's the number for it—you're talking about $30 billion in extra costs because of these rules, because of these kickbacks, because of these problems. That is half the cost of running the NDIS for a year. It is two-thirds of the cost of Medicare for a year. I think the Greens have costed dental for elders and stuff like that at the PBO for putting a senior and child dental benefit scheme in. The cost of extra infrastructure is three times the cost of a senior and child dental benefit scheme. That is the thing you don't get because of these actions. This is the money we have to tax taxpayers more to do these things. So, at home in mum-and-dad land, you're not only paying extra for the homes, the buildings and the construction you get; you actually have to pay more tax to compensate the government for the extra cost in infrastructure. One thing for sure, coming off the supermarket inquiry, is that supermarkets will always get you, but the government will always get you too. We don't miss out on a tax dollar when it's there to be had. If we're paying more for stuff, we know where we can get it: from your pocket. This is what happens.

This is a bad situation that has got out of control because this government took the policeman off the beat. They took the umpire off the field, and everyone suffers. It's not just a coalition opposition beating up on union; it's standing up for the basic economic principles of not allowing standover and bullying tactics. I go back to the union links and their actions in this regard to organised crime. It is hush money being paid by corporations to the unions for access. It is donations being made to organisations that make decisions about the rules. It is the very worst of corrupt practice, when the powerless, the home buyers and the small contractors, are run over by the powerful, which are the big corporations willing to pay kickbacks and the unions willing to take them. That is fundamentally why we're here, to protect the little people, to protect those that don't have the power. This bill and bringing back the ABCC is not a fix all; it is a step in the right direction. Reducing building costs; getting more people in houses; getting your houses cheaper; getting developers to say yes to the projects that are marginal, so there are more choices for you to go and buy; greater supply—that is the housing policy we have here. Greater supply is what's needed in housing. More money into housing can just pump up everything if we're not getting the supply right. The actions here have done that.

Let's go back to the integrity bit. If we want to vacate the field, if we want to remove law, if we don't want to stand up and say, 'We set the rules,' and if we create a vacuum, other people will fill that vacuum with their power. We've seen it in countries when there is a coup where there is a vacuum in power. Bad elements come in. Chaos creates opportunity for bad people. That is what's happened here. Within months of removing the ABCC, the stories came out. It is human nature. Human nature loves chaos, and it was created when we took the players off the field. Bringing it back will create some form of intimidation, some form of barrier, to going out and rampantly doing this. As I said, it won't fix all. It will still have the powerful running over the powerless.

In the debate on the appointment of the administrator, I remember hearing Senator Scarr tell a story that has had the most impact on me of any speech I've heard in this place at any time. It was about a poor worker, a young guy, who worked for an organisation that didn't pay the right amount of money or didn't do the right thing by the union. He got another job and wore a T-shirt from his previous employer to a site. He was locked in a shed, bullied mercilessly and threatened. He went home, put himself in his bedroom and made sure he never woke up. He took his own life because he wore a T-shirt to a union site. Nothing has struck me in this chamber as much as that story. Does anyone deserve to lose their life for wearing the wrong T-shirt to work? Don't ever think that union's power didn't get too far—let's not even call the CFMEU a union, because a union represents workers and does the right thing. It became a crime body. Don't think it didn't have too much power and wasn't abusing that power. That story in itself is enough to say it is wrong.

We've put them in custody for a couple of years to have a look at what they've done; I get that, and that is something. But, when they get out, haven't we got the same animal back on the streets? Without the policeman to enforce it, without the rules to contain it and without the ability to say, 'You are doing the wrong thing,' the vacuum will create chaos again. That's why this bill is so important. This bill is important so that that story never has to get retold; this bill is important so that people can afford houses; and this bill is important so that you get the infrastructure you need, the government can spend money on better things and we can all move on.