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

I am pleased to be able to continue to make my contribution on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. I will, in effect, pick up where I left off in arguing first and foremost for the foundation and for the need for the restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission in part.

If this chamber wanted to consider why there was a need for a commission to oversee and regulate the behaviour of stakeholders and some of the unions associated with the building industry, one need do no more than consider what is currently happening before the royal commission into the construction union, the CFMEU. It is not very pleasant; in fact, for some, it will be a repetitious contribution from our side, as it is a matter that has been canvassed here in this chamber on any number of occasions in the term of this particular Senate and this parliament.

This industry, and the union involvement in this industry, has been a very difficult space for a very long period of time. There have in fact been no fewer than four royal commissions, excluding the current royal commission. Four royal commissions have previously examined matters relating to the construction industry. Mr Stoljar, special counsel, pointed out to this current royal commission, the Cole royal commission, that each of those four inquiries had pointed to systemic unlawfulness and corruption within the industry, and the interim report of the current commission suggested that little, if anything, had changed. Counsel also said the findings of the past royal commissions as well as the current royal commission suggest that there is still within that industry a systemic culture of lawlessness and defiance of the law which threatens productivity, established freedoms and the rule of law more generally. I will revisit that a bit later in my contribution, because I think it is important that we establish the effect of this sort of systemic unlawful behaviour on, in this instance, the construction sector.

The building and construction industry represents around eight per cent of the GDP of our country. That represents a value of $172 billion. Let me say that again in slow motion. The contribution to the GDP of this nation by the building and construction industry—which is plagued by this systemic pattern of unlawful behaviour—is $172,000 million. Without having to break that down any further, what that means—and this should be of interest to all the colleagues in this Senate—is jobs, jobs, jobs and probably more jobs. More jobs, or the existing jobs if they can be preserved—many of which are high-paying jobs—feeds more money into the national economy, into state economies, into regional economies and into small community economies. More jobs equals more money, more money equals more productivity and further investment and that leads, if the enterprises are viable—and many in the construction industry are finding it difficult to be viable because of the impact of the behaviour of the likes of the CFMEU—to more tax receipts for this country. These are very, very simple economic principles—economy 101. More tax receipts leads to allowing governments of the day to invest in more infrastructure and that in turn of course means more construction and more construction means more jobs—and around and round we go again.

I am very pleased to see that one of Labor's leading luminaries, Senator Joe Ludwig, has decided to join us on this side of the chamber tonight as we make our contributions to this debate. Welcome Joe. It has taken you a while to come and back us, but I am very pleased to see that you are able to do it this evening!

Senator Sterle interjecting—

I am sorry. It was a cheap shot. I am sorry, Joe. The bill, if passed—if it gets the support we need—will re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. It will establish a genuinely strong watchdog to maintain the rule of law and protect workers and people in the construction industry—small businesses, medium businesses and large businesses. If they have certainty in their marketplace, where they can go along and, with certainty and confidence, plan their project contributions without the unknown impact on productivity caused by the behaviour of organised workforces under the control of what I would almost refer to as an illegal organisation, the CFMEU, they can go on and create profits.

Let me go back to our cycle, because it is a cycle worth talking about. More profits means more jobs. That means better investments and more investments. It means bigger tax receipts to the Commonwealth that they will definitely invest, at least in part, in things like more infrastructure—and more infrastructure brings about more jobs. It is the job circle; it starts with jobs and it ends with jobs. Because of that this ought to be a unity ticket for everybody in this parliament and certainly in this chamber. Job creation is a very important objective of a coalition government and is a particularly important objective of this coalition government, which has done so much over the period that they have been in power to do things to make sure the private sector—those small businesses, those engine rooms of the nation's economy—are productive and profitable. The reason is that more profits means more taxes, more spending on infrastructure, more jobs and more input into the economy.

Under the former Labor government the regulator that was there was put under pressure. I think there are many men and women in the Labor government and in the Labor movement generally who, if they had thought this through, may well have taken a different course of action. They, like me, share the unity view of more jobs. But Labor is not good at understanding what that means. They know about more jobs; they want more jobs; they know there is a need for money going into the economy—though they are not sure quite how that works, they know that, if it is there, there is greater investment—and I think they understand about there being more tax. They certainly know about government spending; my colleagues across the hall have learnt that practice over many years. But the bit they miss and the bit that we need to keep in the crosshairs of the objective of getting the construction industry back into a viable and profitable environment is this question of productivity.

I raised it earlier in my speech, but it is worth repeating given that this contribution is a continuation. I say this as an observation, not necessarily a criticism. Many of my friends in the Labor Party, my colleagues in this chamber, who have made it through to hold senior and influential positions within the Labor Party have made their journey through the trade union movement.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

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

And very proudly so, Senator Sterle. You are very proud of that. My references are not particularly to you; but, as a general rule, what happens is that the union movement does not create wealth. Their sole objective, and what they are very good at, is to take something off somebody else. And that is a legitimate claim. I am in business myself; I have employees who need to be rewarded in the partnership that they have with enterprise as they go through. But the problem is that, if your sole focus is simply to take more out of a sector—in this case the construction sector—without putting something back in, without improving the productivity, without creating the profitability that is required for enterprises to survive, then of course what happens is that those enterprises go belly-up and the jobs are lost. The people are back out there looking for work again, many of them having to take work in lower paid positions or moving away from the sector or the industry they are in altogether, and for some of these people the whole vicious cycle starts again.

We have something in common: we both want to see those people keep their jobs. We all want to see this sector viable and profitable for all the reasons I espoused earlier and, to do that, it has to operate within the framework of a rule of law. One of the problems we have is that, even after four royal commissions and one current royal commission—and certainly in my last 18 months I suspect some of the organisers from the CFMEU have been mentioned in this place more often than any other entity or identity—we get to a point where, for example, one of their numbers are referred to the Australian Federal Police. This respected organisation brought about charges of blackmail against one of the members of the union, and I suspect the union's response is a response by the CFMEU Construction Division National Secretary, Dave Noonan. I would bet you London to a brick that this is the only statement that Noonan has ever made that I would agree with, because he demonstrates his understanding in his response to a colleague being charged with blackmail when he says:

… police had totally overreacted by charging Mr Lomax with blackmail in relation to what was, after all, normal negotiations of enterprise agreements.

Here we have the contrast: we have the Australian Federal Police, who believe that they have a brief of evidence to indict this individual for blackmail and, relying on the same facts—for I imagine they are not in dispute—Mr Noonan says that this is how enterprise bargaining agreements are negotiated. That alone, in my view, says that this is an industry populated with people like Mr Noonan and dozens and dozens and indeed hundreds of others. There have been something like 670 prosecutions and investigations on individuals. There have been over $6 million of fines levied against this body. We have had Federal Court judges and royal commissioners refer to it as systemic unlawful behaviour. When you look at that in a holistic sense, to an industry that is worth over $170,000 million to this nation, imagine the yield to this country if we were to remove these issues that attack the heart of productivity, to take away the corruption, to take away the special payments and all the charges, imagine how many jobs would be created, imagine the uplift that that would give to communities in our major cities and in some of our smaller regional areas, imagine the tax increases we would appreciate as a nation because of the increases in productivity. These are very simple economic principles. And imagine what our government could do if we had better economic circumstances as a result, the investments it could make, to come back to doing what you and I want to see happen and that would be jobs, jobs and more jobs for the people you and I represent. I thank you for the opportunity to make this contribution.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I look forward to making a contribution tonight to the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013, but before I do, there are a few things I really want to put on the table. It is imperative so that there can be no slurs and no innuendo. I am very close to the CFMEU in Western Australia. I do not hide that. I was very close to the CFMEU in my previous life as a union organiser. To touch on Senator O'Sullivan's contribution, I proudly served the Transport Workers Union as a paid official for 14 years. Prior to that, I proudly represented my own family business as a long distance road train operator between Perth and Darwin. Before that I was a knock-about offsider company driver, so the whole lot. I have a history there.

I worked very closely with the former secretary of the CFMEU, previously the BLF, in Kevin Reynolds. Kevin Reynolds is a very dear friend of mine and has been a very dear friend of mine. If people have a problem with that, give me a call in my office—not a drama, because I am not a fair-weather friend. I do not give up my mates. I am also a good friend of the current secretary of the CFMEU, Mick Buchan. When I say that, I mean it because I have worked closely with the CFMEU on building sites.

There is this fixation with some senators opposite, particularly with Senator McKenzie—I do not know what it is; she is on a jihad; I do not even know if she has met a building worker—to demonise the CFMEU. The CFMEU are in a very tough industry. We should never forget there are not many shrinking violets in the building industry, whether they be labourers, scaffolders, ceiling fixers, chippies, brickies or whatever they may be. The same can be said for the employers. It would be very interesting—unfortunately, at such short notice I cannot share these figures with the chamber, but they should not be too hard to find. It would be interesting to see how many workers have been killed on construction sites in our history. It really would frighten a lot of people—not to mention in China. We raise our eyebrows when we hear of construction sites or mining accidents in China where you hear of something like 600 to 800. I have read different figures but I cannot remember them now. If I were a building worker in Australia, the first thing I would do before I put my boots on would be to go down to the union office to join the CFMEU because I would want the CFMEU to represent me.

I am also a very good friend of Michael O'Connor and a very good friend of Dave Noonan. If anyone has a problem with that, we will take 15 steps to right, go outside and have a chat about it. I do not mean I am going to dong you on the head; I mean I am very happy to defend my friendship with those guys. And do you know what? If anyone wants to print it up, print it up good because I don't rat on mates, unlike some people—no-one in this chamber at the present time. And did I mention Joe McDonald? What a fantastic guy. Get this down, too: Joe, you are doing a great job and you have done for many years. I applaud you, Joe McDonald. Good on you, Mate, for sticking up for building workers in Western Australia.

Senator O'Sullivan talks about jobs. Absolutely are we in it to make sure there are jobs? Yes, we all want to see jobs. We want to see good-paying jobs and we want to see safe jobs. We want to see Australians given the golden opportunity of an apprenticeship for an Australian job with decent Australian wages—no argument. But to listen to some of Senator O'Sullivan's contribution, that unions do not know how to create wealth, only to take, as an ex-union official, I take offence to that because my reputation is on the line and has been on the line for many years in the transport industry in Western Australia. I always made it very clear that unless employers are viable, those jobs are not there. I get that, as does every member on this side of the chamber in this place and on the other side. I find it quite condescending of him to paint the picture that all we want to do is to kill off jobs and to kill of employers so that there are no jobs. That could not be further from the truth. There is a myriad of other things that unionised workforces take to their members and they assist employers.

Good employers do not have anything to worry about. As Senator Back could probably tell you, if he had some issues in his workforce when he was running the Shell tankers down in Launceston, he had no reason to fear the unions. He was a decent employer. His people were paid properly. So decent, honest employers have no problem. Senator O'Sullivan's contribution makes it sound as though these builders—and the CFMEU are on massive sites. Make no mistake about that; they are not in cottage industries. These are massive jobs which all end in six zeros. Do you know what? When you are spending on buildings like the new children's hospital in Perth—I was with the CFMEU the week before last for a candlelight vigil. Unfortunate we were there because there had been a death, not on the site but a very high-profile ceiling company employer unfortunately had taken his own life. That is a very sad thing, and I do not wish to use that as a political football in any way. This is a $1.2 billion job in Perth. It is a government funded job, of course. I think John Holland is the contractor on it—anyway, that can be checked out. But it is well documented through that wonderful organ, The West Australian newspaper, that contractors had not been paid and that there was stress on certain contractors.

It is absolutely disgraceful, because the contractors are employing their workforces—the builders, scaffolders and whatnot. What the hell message does that send when it is a government job? There has been a lot of conversation about it. The government is obviously embarrassed. I do not know what John Holland's excuse for it is—I have not spoken to John Holland. But I just put this to the chamber: it is not a union site. What I do say, very clearly, is that if it were a union site I can guarantee that the contractors and their employees would have been paid.

It is all very well for the Abbott government to attack the CFMEU in particular. I have sat in this chamber and I have heard some of the nonsense commentary, and I have read some of the nonsense commentary about someone swearing at someone on a building site. Well, crikey! If that is a crime then you probably would not find too many truckies who would not be incarcerated every time they went to work. And that is understandable because that is also a very tough industry. And I mean 'tough' in terms of diligence, safety and trying to get your money out of people who are trying to cut every damn corner that they can.

Senator O'Sullivan also made a slur on us on this side of the chamber. I was actually taking some notes at the time so I am not sure if he was slurring the union movement or if he was slurring the Australian Labor Party, but I am a proud member of both so I will take it as a slur on both. He said that we know about government spending. Well, I was reading the paper last week and I saw that this government, the Abbott government, know how to spend too. There is $100 billion more in debt than what there was when they took over.

People listening to all this sort of nonsense would think, 'Gee whiz, senators are saying it; it must be the truth!' I just want to make it very clear that sometimes people are very loose with some of their commentary in this building. You can talk about construction profitability and viability; as I said, the union movement and the Australian Labor Party want the employers to be profitable. We want them to be viable. I do not know how many times I have to say that. I have never met a union organiser who has rubbed their hands together because an employer has gone broke and a certain amount of jobs have been lost!

Going back to the ABCC: I just find this unbelievable. I think it may have been in 2001, and that Mr Abbott may even have been the minister at the time, when the Cole royal commission was born. I remember the Cole royal commission—I remember it very well. If anyone was out there in construction land or voter land they would have asked, 'What is this bogie called the CFMEU? What the heck is going on?' I believe that $66 million was spent through the Cole royal commission, to find what? Nothing.

Once again we have the rerun; it is history repeating itself. The coalition finds itself back in power, so it says to itself, 'Crikey! We have some shortcomings on this—misguidance as a government. We've absolutely stuffed up everything we've told people. We've backflipped on so many election promises we can't deliver. We've got no idea, but the three-word slogans were working perfectly. We know what we'll do! We'll distract ourselves.' This is what I reckon goes on out there in the cabinet room. 'We'll distract ourselves; let's have some more royal commissions! And, crikey! Let's pick on the union movement.'

I have this very clear picture that the majority of all workers in Australia owe the union movement a heck of a lot. Now, the emails might start and I will have all the experts out there saying, 'What's the union ever done for us?' I have to say that the unions have done just about everything they possibly could to put a decent wage, respect in the workplace and dignity in the workplace front and centre. If it were not for the union movement there would not be superannuation. If it were not for the union movement does anyone think we would have paid leave? Does anyone think we would have sick leave? Does anyone think we would have annual leave? Does anyone think we would get 10 days paid holiday a year to have some quality time with our kids?

Going on that side over there, they hate it—they absolutely despise it. We know that. And we know the pressure that the government is under. We know that business is seething behind the scenes; their wallets have snapped shut. If I am saying something that is wrong, then they can jump up and tell me that it is. This is because there has not been the desire in this term for the Abbott government to take on industrial reform, 'Look—no, placate the tribe. Let's have a royal commission. Let's spend'—what is it now?—'$80 million.' I think that is what we are up to so far. Could we not build some hospitals with that—could we not do some wonderful stuff?

It is just history running itself again. Take it out and target the CFMEU. But the CFMEU will not back down. They will do everything they can to make their worksites safe and they will do everything they can to make sure that Australians are employed. I want this to be clear too: you would think that the Labor Party and the CFMEU, like the wider union movement, were anti foreign workers, because that is the defence that the government and some people like to run because we want to stand up for Australian jobs first. That is important. One of the most important things for us is to make sure that Australian kids—

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can raise your eyebrows over on that side! I would love to hear your contribution. In fact, I will go even better: we can go outside and debate it all around the country—not a problem. The union movement is not against foreign workers. The union movement is against foreign workers being used to knock out Australian kids and the opportunity for them to have a job. The union movement is opposed to foreign workers being exploited. That is nothing new. We have always done that and we will always continue to do that—we in the Labor Party and in the union movement.

I will come back to the bill. There was a Senate inquiry that looked into it. I note that the Senate inquiry made a number of recommendations—not from the government senators but from the Labor senators. Of course, you would not expect the government senators to look too deeply into it. With all fairness to the government senators, they are following the instructions of their ministers and the instructions of the Prime Minister. When you really are as bad a government as the one we have here at the moment then—what is that thing you can get on with the Twitter bird?—you get on Twitter and see that there is actually #worstpmever. I can understand that they want all these distractions, so they say, 'Let's go knock Australian workers.'

Let me just touch on something that I found out in Perth last week. There is a job at the Old Treasury Building, which is a union site. There are union wages and the CFMEU have the membership there—the guys and girls are all proud members of the CFMEU and enjoying a decent wage. I do not know how many hundreds of millions of dollars it is worth.

I spoke to a carpentry contractor, a chippie, at a candlelight vigil—he was there supporting the workers of a ceiling contractor who unfortunately lost his life—and he told me that he has more-than-competent employees, fully qualified tradesmen and fantastic chippies, but he cannot get on the site because there are foreign workers. I am not going to say what nation they are from; it does not matter what nation they are from. He raised it with me. He said to me: 'Do you know what I want? All I want is honest politicians.' I thought he was having a dig to start with—I had never met him before—so I said, 'There's a racehorse called that'. But I worked out that he was not having a dig; he was being deadly serious. He just wanted honest politicians who would stand up there and defend Australian jobs.

I think he said he had about six guys. He said: 'My guys are now taken off the job and there is some fitting being done'—I do not know exactly what the extent of the work was. He said: 'Why have foreign workers been brought in? Why aren't we good enough to do that work?' How do you argue with that? I am not going to be silly enough to think for one minute that it just happened that one employer had a heap of workers all from the same country. This is the sort of nonsense that goes on.

It really does annoy me no end when all the government can do is attack the CFMEU. They make these absolutely ridiculous statements. You would think there are lawless gangsters on these sites. If there is a bad apple—the whole union movement has made this very clear—deal with the bad apple. There are laws in the land that this falls under. Police have those powers—whatever the issue may be. Why do we have to have one entity that will just target one industry?

If you are going to be fair dinkum, if you are going to be honourable and concerned about the viability of employers, then get out on the farms and find out if those workers are working safe hours, find out if they are here on the right visas. They should not be exploited. We just saw a show on the ABC on Monday night—Four Corners—about the great exploitation of foreign workers on farms. This is not new. We have been saying this for years. For years we have been talking about it. In my home state of Western Australia we have had a number of occasions. There is a case going on now—a farm up north of Wanneroo somewhere. I do not know if it was strawberries—whatever it was—very high profile. Why isn't the government worried about that? Why aren't Mr Abbott and his ministers targeting that sort of nonsense? Not a word! We have to wait for it to come on TV.

There was the unfortunate situation that was also on TV about three Filipino workers killed on one ship. What the hell is that all about? Was the government saying: 'My goodness me! What is going on with these foreign workers on these foreign vessels?' No, not worried about it one little bit. We had to bring it in to the Senate with the support of the crossbenchers to get an inquiry going. I am going to chair that inquiry and we are going to do a darn good job on it. We are going to tour around and listen to what is going on; because the government is not worried about three Filipinos on one ship. Two were killed, and one is missing overboard somewhere—just mysteriously fell off on the way back from China.

Do we have the government saying: 'Crikey, what is happening out there? And what are we creating if we are going to try and deal with Australian ships and Australian jobs?' The silence is deafening. I have not heard one senator stand up and say 'This is not on. Maybe my son, my daughter or my grandkids might want to be seafarers. Maybe they want to work on Australian ships and maybe they want decent pay.' What is it with this nation that we all raise our eyebrows—you want to throw stones at us because we stand up for decent pay? Or is it only us politicians who are allowed to have decent pay? 'How dare we let Australian workers on construction sites have decent pay? If they have decent pay and they want to be safe there is something drastically wrong. Let's blame the CFMEU.'

The hypocrisy that I have witnessed in this place for 10 years! I worked on transport sites for 14 years prior to that and, before anyone else wants to have a cheap dig, for 14 years I was an owner-driver running my own little business. So I do not come here as some apparatchik who went through university and thought, 'I wouldn't mind being a senator one day'. Like the majority of my mates on this side of the chamber—Senator Urquhart and Senator Moore here beside me, for example—I actually have had dirt under the fingernails. We know what it is like to have to get up in the morning you are crook as a dog; it is 5.30 in the morning; it is freezing cold; you have to go to work.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I don't?

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Back, I am not arguing with you. No-one would ever argue against Senator Back's credentials. We may have a difference of opinion about this bill; I have no doubt about that.

But I know darn well how it is when you come home from Darwin; you are absolutely buggered; you have been doing ridiculous hours—because in the wild west fatigue management was 'keep driving until you fell asleep at the wheel or go home'. And you come home and see bills. I remember the famous old bills they used to have in the eighties, with a picture of a finger with a ribbon around it on the corner because it had not been paid. I have not stopped working but I have not paid my tyre bill or my fuel bill, and it is building up.

Why do we have to sit here and continuously watch coalition governments that unfortunately want to at every opportunity attack unionised labour and unionised sites? Not only that; what about the indignity where an employer has come to an arrangement with their workforce and done a collective agreement, with the union helping out as the third party? Guess what? 'We better not give them any government work'. I do not suggest for one minute it is every member opposite, but I tell you what: there are a lot of them. And I will be absolutely gobsmacked if I ever hear one on the other side get up and defend workers. And, if any of you were employers, I would expect you to defend your employees. What difference are they to the construction workers on these sites. (Time expired)

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I preface my comments this evening on the Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 with the observation that I am the proud grandson of Mr Tom Back, who was the secretary of what was then the Lumpers Union on the wharf in Fremantle in the 1930s until his death working in 1945. The Lumpers Union became the Waterside Workers Federation. I think Senator Sterle will agree with me that the Waterside Workers Federation became the MUA. So I come from a background as both an employer and from a family in which the value of unions was always there to see.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Sorry to interrupt you, Senator Back. I just wanted to check—do you recall whether you have spoken before on this bill?

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not believe I had. I thought this was the first time the bill has come in.

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is resuming from March. And I understand you may have spoken on 4 March, I am told.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gracious me, I'm just winding up, and I'm giving my first and only credit to Senator Sterle! That's why they have called time!

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is unfortunate perhaps, but I am informed that you have spoken on 4 March on this particular bill. So in the absence of any advice to the contrary I would ask you to resume your seat, as you would be well aware that speaking twice on such a bill is not—

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very disappointing. I had so much to contribute.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Is it your intention to go to another government speaker on the back of that?

Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would go through the list, and I have Senator McGrath on my list, who coincidentally is running into the chamber as we speak. So I would be intending to go to Senator McGrath. Senator McGrath, I just advise you that you only have a few minutes.

Senator Ronaldson interjecting—

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Memo to self—I probably need a bit more exercise, because you shouldn't get out of breath in the distance from my office to the chamber!

It gives me great pleasure to speak on this bill—

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm sure it does!

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And I think Senator Moore, who has this ability to give me the giggles—and I would ask you to stop giggling, Senator Moore, because I would have to look away from you, and we would not want that!

Senator Moore interjecting—

I think it might be something to do with this bench, because I think Senator Smith last night had the giggles also and it might be contagious. It is a very serious piece of legislation that we are looking at here.

What I want to talk about is the government's commitment to re-establishing the ABCC and returning the rule of law to the building and construction industry. The evidence that the construction industry stands apart from the rest of Australian industry is beyond doubt. The rule of law has little if any currency in the construction industry, and that is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to Australians and it is especially unacceptable to those of us on this side of the chamber, who proudly believe in the rule of law as being one of the most important values of a liberal democracy.

The problem is that for far too long there has simply not been an effective deterrent or a consequence in the building industry when people break the law. When the laws are weak and ill-suited to the problem and there is a weak regulator it is hardly surprising that people in the industry would continue to break the law, because they know they will probably get away with it. The this is what the ABCC is designed to deal with.

When it was first established it was starting to be effective in showing industry participants that their unlawful conduct had consequences and that they were more likely to be brought to account for breaking the law. This realisation in the building industry that breaking the law had consequences was starting to make a difference.

Regrettably, at that crucial time the Labor Party gave into union demands and abolished the ABCC and instituted a weakened shell of a regulator. Labor cut the maximum penalty for breaking the law by two-thirds and slashed the replacement agency's budget and ability to enforce the law. Who can then be surprised that almost immediately parts of the Melbourne CBD were shut down in defiance of Supreme Court orders?

There remains a pressing need to fix the current legislation to re-establish the ABCC so as to re-establish meaningful penalties that actually deter people considering compliance with the law as optional and stop them repeatedly from breaking the law as it suits them.