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

Labor opposes the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. These bills have serious negative impacts on the human rights of Australian citizens. The bills infringe a wide range of common-law rights and privileges, including the right to silence—maybe the senators over on the other side should have some silence now and again—the right to freedom from retrospective laws, and equality of treatment before the law, and they reverse the onus of proof on a person under investigation. These are bad bills.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Beautiful stuff!

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

Senator O'Sullivan says this is beautiful stuff. Taking away the human rights of Australian citizens, according to Senator O'Sullivan, is beautiful stuff. No wonder you Bjelke-Petersen people are still the same. You have never changed.

Both the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills hold serious concerns about these bills. It is essential to the consideration of the bills in this place that, when a government seeks to place limits on the human rights of Australians, it carries a very heavy onus to justify its actions. It must establish that the limitation is aimed at achieving a legitimate objective. It must establish whether and how there is a rational connection between the limitation and the objective. It must establish that the limitation is proportionate to that objective. These tests set the bar very high. The government has not cleared the bar; it has fallen well short.

The PJCHR criticised the statement of compatibility and the explanatory memorandum for the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill. The PJCHR noted that the documents provided by the government made assertions and statements of fact that are not supported by evidence or data. The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills criticised the explanatory memorandum, noting:

… generally, the explanatory memorandum is regrettably brief and uninformative, for the most part repeating the provisions of the bill. For example, the explanatory memorandum frequently notes that various provisions are modelled on or similar to provisions contained in the FW Act—

the Fair Work Act—

but without any detail about the extent of similarities or whether there are salient differences.

The Scrutiny of Bills Committee—remember, this is a cross-party committee—made numerous criticisms of the bill, including on provisions relating to the potential for exclusion of judicial review rights—people were excluded from judicial review; trespasses on personal rights and liberties; powers to enter premises, including private residences, without a warrant; delegation of legislative power; undue dependence upon insufficiently defined powers; broad and ill-defined discretionary powers; and high penalties usually reserved for criminal jurisdictions. The minister's response to the Scrutiny of Bills Committee is totally inadequate, and the opposition is not persuaded that the infringements of human rights in the bill are necessary, proportionate or legitimate.

To be very clear, the infringements of human rights and the coercive powers of the ABCC proposed in these bills are extreme. They are the types of powers usually reserved for criminal investigation and national security agencies. They have no place in industrial relations. Lest there be any confusion, the proposed re-establishment of the ABCC is not as a criminal investigation agency. Its jurisdiction is limited to the civil law in the industrial relations jurisdiction.

In its second report of the 44th Parliament, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights subjected these bills to extensive criticism. In relation to the right to equality and nondiscrimination, the committee noted:

In relation to the present bills, the government must show that there are objective and reasonable grounds for adopting a specific legislative regime applicable only to the building and construction industry and that it is a proportionate measure in pursuit of a legitimate objective.

The committee—the cross-party committee, with members of the coalition on that committee—found that a legitimate objective could not be found. In relation to the right to privacy, infringed by the proposed powers of the ABCC to compel the disclosure of information, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights—a cross-party committee—found the limitations on the right to privacy proposed in the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 'have not been demonstrated to be a proportionate measure'.

The committee found that the proposed powers of entry and related partners raised issues of compatibility with the right to privacy guaranteed by article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Personal rights and liberties stand to be trampled by clause 72 which provides for—

Debate interrupted.