Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the sixth report of the 44th Parliament of the committee: Examination of legislation in accordance with the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights' sixth report of the 44th Parliament covers 18 bills introduced in the period 24 to 27 March, three of which have been deferred for further consideration, and 175 legislative instruments received during the period 8 March to 25 April. The report also includes the committee's consideration of 10 responses to matters raised in previous committee reports.

Of the bills considered in this report, I note that the following bills are scheduled for debate during this week: the G20 (Safety and Security) Complementary Bill 2014, the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Bill 2014 and the Tax Laws Amendment (2014 Measures No. 1) Bill 2014. The report outlines the committee's assessment of the compatibility of these bills with human rights, and I encourage my fellow senators to look at the committee's report to inform your deliberations on the merits of the proposed legislation.

I would like to draw senators' attention to one bill in this report which raises an issue of particular interest and relevance to the committee's task of assessing legislation for compatibility with human rights. The G20 (Safety and Security) Complementary Bill 2014 is intended to clarify the interaction between provisions of the G20 (Safety and Security) Act 2013 (Queensland) and existing Commonwealth legislation at the Brisbane Airport during the G20 summit. The G20 summit is to be held in Brisbane in November this year. In simple terms, the bill will allow the provisions of the Queensland act to apply in certain areas of Brisbane Airport in the lead-up to and during the G20 summit. Commonwealth laws that would otherwise apply in Brisbane Airport, which is a Commonwealth place, will effectively be rolled back.

As noted in the report, the application of the provisions of the Queensland law to areas of Brisbane Airport amounts to the enactment of Commonwealth law in these places. Given this, to the extent that those laws may engage and limit human rights, the report notes that any such laws should be subject to a human rights assessment in accordance with the committee's usual expectations for new legislation. As the statement of compatibility for the G20 bill did not provide an assessment of the provisions of the Queensland act that will be applied in the Commonwealth areas of Brisbane Airport, the committee has requested further information from the minister on this particular matter.

More generally, the committee notes that the G20 bill is a specific instance of the application of state laws to Commonwealth places as provided for by the Commonwealth Places (Application of Laws) Act 1970. This raises the wider question of how state laws that apply to Commonwealth places can be systemically assessed for compatibility with human rights. The committee has therefore determined that it will undertake a human rights assessment of the Commonwealth places act and has requested that the Minister for Justice prepare a statement of compatibility to facilitate the committee's consideration of that act. I encourage senators to consult the full discussion of the G20 bill in the report, which provides a more detailed account of the issues raised and the interesting background to the practice of applying state laws to Commonwealth places.

Finally, in relation to responses to matters previously raised by the committee, the report contains consideration of 10 such responses and the committee's concluding remarks on these matters. With these comments, I commend the committee's sixth report of the 44th Parliament to the Senate.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would also like to comment on the report and acknowledge the work that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has done over the last period of time. One issue that Senator Smith has failed to report on to the chamber is one of the most important scrutinies that the committee undertook, and that was the scrutiny of the bill to re-establish the ABCC, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. That was, I think, a very good report, a report that was carried out on a non-partisan basis that clearly outlined all of the breaches of human rights under the proposed ABCC bill. I am just surprised that that was not noted in this report, because it was one of the clearest reports I have ever read by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee which clearly said there are significant human rights problems in imposing these limitations on the rights of building and construction workers in this country.

I can understand why the coalition do not want to raise that in this report, but I just thought that while I was here I would raise the issues that were raised in the report. The report was quite clear and unequivocal about the fact that the bill as outlined in the explanatory memorandum and as outlined by Senator Abetz, the proponent of and minister responsible for the bill, clearly breached the human rights of building and construction workers in this country. It clearly breached those rights. Yet we will have coalition senator after coalition senator ignore that position when they get up to support removing the human rights of building and construction workers in this country.

Not only did we have the Scrutiny of Bills Committee in the Senate come to the conclusion that workers' human rights were breached by the ABCC bill; the joint human rights committee of the House of Representatives also raised significant issues about breaches of human rights in this bill. So the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and the joint committee were as one on this—that the human rights of building and construction workers, ordinary Australians going out to do good work every day, day in, day out, were being breached by aspects of this bill. I am of the view that, given that these recommendations came up from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, they should be mentioned here. I again say it was one of the most important discussions and reports that that committee undertook.

I am aware that, when the committee looked at Senator Abetz's explanatory memorandum to the bill and the justification for taking human rights away from building and construction workers, they said it did not meet the test for removing rights from building and construction workers in this country. That is why the committee I was involved in formed the view that the arguments being put forward by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee should be given some weight in our report, and that we should be asking Senator Abetz to have a look at this critique—this very strong criticism—of the removal of human rights by the ABCC. Senator Abetz was dismissive in terms of his analysis of why workers' freedom of association should be removed—why their rights to act in the way that every worker around the rest of the country, in different industries, should be allowed to act under the appropriate legislation. I want to thank the Scrutiny of Bills Committee for treating the ABCC bill seriously—for going through, in a very professional and detailed manner, the issues involved in removing human rights from ordinary Australians via the ABCC bill.

I do not think it is appropriate that workers' rights should be removed in this country on some fallacious argument that there is illegality going on in the industry. When the references committee of the workplace relations committee looked at this issue, we received evidence from the Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and the Victorian police that they had no concerns of widespread corruption in the building and construction industry. That was one of the reasons that was being put forward: that there was widespread corruption in the building and construction industry. That was being used as an argument by Senator Abetz and those on the other side for why they should remove workers' rights in the building and construction industry; for why not just their industrial rights but their human rights—rights that we have signed on to through international conventions—should be removed.

It was an excellent report from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. It was matched by the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the lower house saying: 'This should not happen; this should not be done.' It will be interesting to see the submissions of the senators who raised all these issues in the Scrutiny of Bills Committee report, either in support of the bill or against the bill, when the ABCC bill comes to the Senate. When they sat down, they came to the conclusion that the bill does not meet the test for removing human rights; so the coalition senators on the Scrutiny of Bills Committee have, in my view, a responsibility to stand up for their findings. I would expect them in their contributions to the debate on a bill that takes away the rights of building workers in this country—not only their industrial rights but their human rights—to stand up and say what they found when they scrutinised that bill, because they scrutinised the bill and found it wanting. They found it wanting in a range of areas in relation to building workers' human rights.

I am very pleased to have been, fortunately, in the chamber when the report came forward from the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. Again, I am a bit disappointed that the Scrutiny of Bills Committee report did not contain some, or at least a little, of the critique made about a major bill that affects the human rights of industrial workers in this country. I will be interested to see how those senators behave on the floor of the Senate when they are dealing with the ABCC bill, when it comes to the floor of the Senate, given they have said it removes human rights.

It is fortunate I was here to bring the chamber's attention to these terrible removals of human rights under the ABCC bill. I will certainly go through the views of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee in detail, and I will also go through the views of the Joint Committee on Human Rights when the bill comes before the parliament; but this is an important point and I could not miss the opportunity to raise the issue of the removal of human rights from Australian workers by the coalition.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I could not let that contribution from Senator Cameron go. I assume that he just ran out of time making that contribution, because there is a list of breaches of human rights related to the construction sector that I have not heard from Senator Cameron.

I did not hear him complain about the breach of privacy, allegedly undertaken by an official from the CFMEU, relating to the release of the superannuation data of members of Cbus to the CFMEU so that they could have a little visit from CFMEU members and experience some of their rather unique recruiting strategies. I did not hear Senator Cameron talk about the right to privacy that those members of Cbus have. I did not hear Senator Cameron talk about the right to be free from physical harm—physical harm the workers at the Grocon construction site were put in danger of by the CFMEU and by the senator's famed friends in the construction union. I did not hear Senator Cameron talk about how people should be allowed to go about their legal course of business without the threats, intimidation, violence and criminality of the union movement—and particularly of the CFMEU—as occurred in Melbourne and as the Victorian Supreme Court found when it found the CFMEU guilty of criminal contempt.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I draw your attention to the issue of relevance here. The debate that is before the floor is the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and the removal of human rights, and the Senator has gone nowhere near that.

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I just assumed Senator Cameron ran out of time. But then we do not hear, and we have not heard from Senator Cameron, about the rights of people to go to work, to look at a picket line, to hear from people why they should not cross that picket line, and to then cross the picket line and choose to go to work. Because a picket line, of course, is not legally a physical obstruction. It is a protest. And there is no power in law whatsoever for members of a union, or any assembly of people, to try and physically block access to and egress from part of this country. But Senator Cameron does not care about that.

We do not hear Senator Cameron's concerns about the human rights of people involved in the construction industry who have to have personal security guards at their homes and at their workplaces because of the threats of violence from members associated with the CFMEU. We do not hear about the human rights of those people who want to go about their business—running a small business, or happy employees—who are forced to pay and forced to sign up to CFMEU contracts, because Senator Cameron falls for that great Labor shibboleth: the idea that somehow, by associating with some other people and calling yourself a union, you have more rights than any other assembly of people in this country. Senator Cameron's plaintive cries for human rights, Madam Acting Deputy President, are nothing short of empty screeching for an interest group that funds and owns the Labor Party; the shareholders, the owners and the chief racketeers of the modern-day Labor Party. No-one should ever listen to a member of the party opposite, or indeed to a member of the Greens, talk about human rights until those senators stand in this place and condemn the violence that occurs in Victorian workplaces—violence that has been held by a court to be a criminal contempt by the CFMEU. But no, we do not hear about that—because both the Greens and the Labor Party are in hock to the union movement, who write them cheques. They have no concerns about the human rights of everyday Australians and no concerns about the rights of small-business owners to go about their business, and to be free from threats and violence. They are nothing but empty phrases.

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The last speaker has told us what he has not heard from Labor and the Greens; but let us remember what we have not heard from the coalition. They have again brought forward the ABCC, the building and construction commission, which they now want to resurrect—like a dead animal that smells and stinks—but which brings more problems to people who are just trying to go about their lives and get a decent standard of living—and return alive from work. That is what you will not hear from this government. The Australian Building and Construction Commission, which came in in 2005, has caused massive problems. Its intent was to outlaw unionism.

We know that union sites are safe sites. What you will never hear from the coalition, and what you will never hear from Senator Ryan, is them actually addressing this issue. Once that commission came into existence, there was about a 95 per cent increase in issues of injuries and deaths on building sites, which are incredibly dangerous. If Senator Ryan is serious about cleaning up the industry, why doesn't he address the issue of dodgy contractors; contractors that are avoiding so much—not just how they should be paying their taxes but also how they should be following occupational health and safety laws? You would never hear a mention about that issue of safety from Senator Ryan or his colleagues. Nor do they address what this building and construction commission did: making building workers come under a code of law that is harsher than the laws which murderers and a whole range of criminals face, in terms of the secrecy provisions and the operation of the laws.

The double standards that we have seen again from Senator Ryan here in this place really expose what those opposite are up to, and why they want to bring back in the ABCC: to de-unionise work sites. What their constituency wants is to de-unionise work sites. Why do they want it? So they can make more profits. When you have to abide by safety standards; when you have an organised workforce; when you have unions that have a right to go on the job; then you have to work to achieve a safer building site. For many of the companies that the coalition works with, they are companies who are getting all those developer donations that are causing them so much embarrassment in New South Wales—and it is starting to move into the federal coalition—and those are the links that we need to expose here. That is why the Australian Building and Construction Commission came about. It has got so much to do with those developer donations, and with the coalition delivering for their side of politics—and it results in people losing their lives. That is what you will not hear Senator Ryan speak about, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Question agreed to.