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

I rise to oppose the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 on behalf of the Labor Party. This is just another element of this government's antiworker agenda. It is another element of their anti-union agenda. This bill is a significant attack on Australia's working class. The bill is the product of the coalition's ideological hatred for collective bargaining and workplace rights. Decent bargaining rights, the capacity to increase wages and conditions, the right to be treated with dignity and respect when you clock on at work are threatened by this government and by this legislation. Even the International Monetary Fund has recognised that unions are the bulwark—the barrier—against increased inequality. Yet this mob do not care. They simply want to see the destruction of collective bargaining and union rights in this country.

The coalition has used a royal commission with politically generated terms of reference and a compliant royal commissioner to deliver recommendations that weaken collective bargaining and working people's rights. The royal commissioner, Dyson Heydon, was biased and demonstrated his determination to deliver the coalition government's agenda during the conduct of the commission. It is a sad and disappointing end to Royal Commissioner Heydon's public career.

The party which gave us John Howard, Tony Abbott, Peter Reith and Work Choices can never be trusted. The party which gave us the 2014 budget, hacking away at welfare in this country, hacking away at support for families, hacking away at pensions—this is a government that cannot be trusted. The party which supported workers being unfairly dismissed cannot be trusted. This is the party which said: 'If you are a small company, you can unfairly dismiss someone. Unfair dismissal is okay.' This mob cannot be trusted on any of these issues. The party which wants to destroy penalty rates and annual leave loading cannot be trusted.

The party who lost 10 MPs as a result of a New South Wales ICAC inquiry—Liberal MPs were systematically breaking the law by accepting donations from developers—cannot be trusted. You never hear them talking about upholding the law anywhere else except in the building and construction industry. They are a law-free zone when it comes to every other area. The Liberal Party, whose MP was busted accepting illegal cash payments in a brown paper bag in the back seat of a building developer's Bentley in Newcastle, surely cannot be trusted.

The Turnbull government are a divided disgrace. They are a rabble who are disunited and at war with each other. The only things that bring them together are attacks on minority groups and the workers of this country. The only time you see them getting excited about anything is when they are attacking workers, attacking pensioners, attacking multiculturalism and attacking the rights of working people in this country. That is when they get excited. That is when they start jumping up and down. They do not get excited about anything else. They are certainly not excited about the current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. They are not very excited about him at all, and why would they be? What a disappointment that guy is.

The Turnbull government has ignored one of the biggest problems in the building and construction industry—that is, the non-payment of contractors, subcontractors and employees for work that they carry out. The recent Labor initiated inquiry into security of payments in the building and construction industry has been ignored by this government, even though the recommendations brought forward by Labor would commence a process to resolve the non-payment of $3 billion a year to hardworking Australians in the industry. The evidence before the committee was compelling that the non-payment for work carried out by workers, contractors and small businesses in the building and construction industry—not being paid for the work they had done—creates industrial disputes, under-resourced companies, declining productivity, unsafe workplaces, bankruptcies and suicides. We heard evidence of a Perth builder committing suicide. He had a successful business. One of the tier 1 contractors would not pay what they owed him and he committed suicide because of the stress. It was an outrageous proposition.

The coalition have had this report in their hands for months and they have done nothing about it. If you could solve that one problem in the industry, you would solve much of the industrial disputation as unions try to make sure that their members get paid and are not ripped off by pyramid contracting and by phoenix companies closing down one day and rebirthing the next day. They do nothing about it—absolutely nothing. All they want to do is hammer the trade union movement and try to diminish collective bargaining in the industry.

The bills do nothing for what is recognised by the Labor Party and participants in the industry as a fundamental fault in the building and construction industry that needs to be resolved. It would be far more productive and it would be in the interests of the industry and its workforce if we were discussing legislation that provided security of payments in the industry rather than an ideological attack on workers through the proposed ABCC.

These bills and their predecessors have been discussed ad nauseam in the last few years. I have been involved in a number of inquiries that have exposed the lies being perpetrated by the coalition that these bills will increase productivity, reduce industrial disputation and usher in a new era of industrial calm in the industry. You only have to read some of the comments that have been made publicly in the last few weeks about the attacks on collective bargaining through the implementation of what is called the Building Industry Code.

A fundamental part of this bill is a code that has been established to determine how Australian workers are allowed to bargain with their employer, and how employers are allowed to bargain with their employees. I do not know of anything else like it anywhere in the world, yet in Australia under the coalition government, as an attack on collective bargaining, they are prepared to put in charge of determining whether companies and unions have been bargaining effectively a person who has never bargained in his life. He is an ex-Federal Police officer who worked with the Royal Ulster Constabulary and has been involved in all sorts of issues, but not bargaining. He knows nothing about it, and he has been given, under this bill, the opportunity to determine bargaining outcomes for workers. There has been lots of analysis done on the code, but the key findings in relation to the issues in the code are that it is highly objectionable as it contains restrictions on legitimate industrial relations practices that are lawful in every other country. No other country has a code like this in place. There is a booming construction industry out there, and that certainly undermines the government's justification for what is happening. The industry is booming, and that is under the laws without any changes. There is no need for this act that they would have.

The code adversely impacts the number of apprentices. Over 27 years as a full-time union official, I have negotiated many, many agreements over many years, and one of the things that my union, the metalworkers union, used to do was say, 'Let's negotiate with the boss to try and get some more apprentices on the job to give young kids a chance in the industry and an opportunity for an apprenticeship and a trade.' We wrote that into agreements all over the country, and we wrote into those agreements decent wages and decent conditions for the apprentices, because not only was that an investment in the future for the company but it actually increased the productivity and skill base for the industry in the future. Any of the crossbenchers that are here at the moment or listening in should understand that, if you back this in, you are denying unions and workers collectively the ability to negotiate to get more apprentices on the job and give young Australian workers an opportunity to get an apprenticeship and a trade. That is a key part of this legislation through the code, and you should understand what you are going to do if you back this in. You are taking opportunities away from young Australians, and that would be an absolute disgrace.

The code impacts more businesses and more workers in more harsh ways than ever before. It places more bureaucracy on businesses large and small, and it will dampen growth; there is no doubt about that. The code disproportionately impacts women, older workers and unions. Some of the commentary that has been out there recently is that, if this code comes in and the agreements that are out there—thousands of agreements across the industry—become noncompliant then what you are actually achieving is a bargaining round of a size you have never seen before for many years in this industry, because the unions will be entitled to go out, if the code and this bill determine that their agreements are no longer lawful, and bargain for new agreements. So there will be disruption across the industry, and that would be a disaster. That would be absolute stupidity from this government, and that is another reason why we should not put this bill in.

I spoke earlier about the head of the fair work building commission—the person who will probably head up the ABCC and the hero of the extreme Right in industrial relations—Mr Nigel Hadgkiss. This is a man who has never negotiated an industrial agreement in his life, but who will have control of the code under this government's proposal to dismantle collective bargaining in the industry. This is a man who has treated the Senate with absolute contempt. This is a man who is simply a puppet of the coalition. He was an appointee of Senator Abetz when Senator Abetz was the IR minister. Senator Abetz appointed this man because of his right-wing views. He has set about trying to ensure that he is not subject to accountability, as are other public servants and other heads of government business organisations. He has continually defied the estimates process and the call from this Senate itself to provide details of what he is doing and what he is spending money on.

This guy is really unfit for the job. If you agree with this bill, you will be putting in charge of this ABCC, with more powers than ever, someone who is entirely unsuited to the job of applying a fair, reasonable and unbiased approach to working people in the industry. The agency that he heads up has great power over working people. I just think it is terrible that he would not advise the Senate estimates committee on the issues that every other head of department and every other head of an agency do as a matter of course at estimates.

He reported in one of his annual reports that he had visited 50 companies and gone to 50 boardroom meetings. He expended public money to go to those boardroom meetings. When I asked in the estimates process, 'Who did you meet and what did you do?' he basically said, 'None of your business.' Well, it is the Senate's business. This guy has no understanding of his obligations as a public servant or of his obligations to the Parliament of Australia. He treats it with absolute contempt.

He said, 'I don't have a diary.' He could sit down and write a report and remember that he had met 50 companies in 50 boardrooms, but he could not tell us who they were, he could not tell us when he went there and he could not tell us who he met with because he claimed he does not keep a diary. It is just unbelievable for a senior officer of a government agency not to have a diary. In fact, I think it breaches a lot of Public Service requirements.

So this is the guy who sets about telling the Senate, 'I'm not telling you what I am spending money on.' We asked him, 'Who are you employing?' He employs a lot of former Federal Police officers and New South Wales and Victorian police officers in the agency, but he will not tell us what the make-up is so that the public, who pay the bills, can understand what is going on.

The worst part about this guy is that he sets about denying right of entry for union officials to sites to deal with health and safety issues. It was clear recently. On 25 November 2015 two Irish backpackers were employed on the Jaxon site in Bennett Street, East Perth: Gerry Bradley and Joe McDermott. They were out here on working holiday visas. They were sitting, having their morning tea, and they were crushed to death under a concrete block. I met the parents, the brother and sisters, and the partner, and it was tragic. Part of the problem was the union could not get on that site to deal with proper health and safety issues because of the fair work building commission bill. It will be even harder under the bill that is being proposed.

In Senate estimates they would not answer up-front; they took questions on notice. We finally got some facts back from them. What came out in Senate Estimates was that there were six Jaxon jobs in Perth at the time and the union had raised serious safety issues about Jaxon. It was confirmed that fair work building commission inspectors had visited three times the site where Gerry and Joe were killed. That was about keeping the unions off the job. There were 11 requests to the WorkSafe commission to attend Jaxon sites over two years. But what we do know is, if you are a construction worker in Perth and you have serious safety failures and you want them fixed, you are more likely to get a visit from a fair work building commission inspector helping the boss to keep the union off the job than you are to get a visit from the safety regulator.

The other day a 27-year-old German backpacker working on a Western Australian construction site fell 13 floors to her death. The site is run by notorious anti-union company Hanssen, whose managing director, Gerry Hanssen, is well known for his anti-union position. So it is absolutely essential that unions get access to look after the safety of workers on the site, whether they are backpackers, 457 visa workers, Australian workers or apprentice. There should be access to those sites. The systematic approach of keeping the unions off the site through Nigel Hadgkiss and his biased approach at Fair Work Building and Construction should be stopped.

But it is not just the Labor Party that is seeing that there are problems with this new bill. The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, which has the job to oversight these bills, said that there are a number of examples where human rights are diminished under this bill, such as allowing officers into residential premises without a warrant. The fair work building commission has greater rights than the police force in terms of entering properties. The police force needs a warrant—not the fair work building commission. They do not need a warrant to enter residential premises. The bill trespasses on personal rights and liberties and reverses the onus of proof. This is a bad bill. This is bad legislation. It is based on a government wanting to reduce the rights and capacity of ordinary workers to get a decent living in this country, and it is all on the basis of looking after the big end of town and big business. You should reject this bill as bad legislation. It is a bad bill. (Time expired)

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

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. Today is another day under the Turnbull government and another day of brutal attacks on working people. Yesterday we saw in this parliament a debate on the registered organisations bill—a bill to damage unions, to tie them up in red tape, to make it difficult for them to do their work representing working people and for working people to collectively organise.

What we are seeing today is a targeted attack on one particular group of workers: construction workers. The workers who don those fluoro jackets that are so popular with the likes of Mr Turnbull and many of his ministers. They use those fluoros when it is convenient. But, when it comes to ensuring that the workers who are building our hospitals, our homes, our schools and the infrastructure we need to drive this country are still alive at the end of the day and can come home, they are not interested. What they are interested in in driving forward with the ABCC legislation is, again, delivering for their corporate mates, for the people who have put them into office, for those who have given them millions and millions of dollars in donations. What is going on here is a very ugly story. If it were happening in another country, it would be called out and out corruption where a government comes into office and delivers for those who have, over the years, put millions of dollars into getting them elected, by weakening the laws to benefit the profit line of those companies.

This issue about the rights of construction workers is very important. I will come to it in more detail in a moment, but right now I want to deal with this issue of safety. We know that in the period the ABCC was operating—under the legislation that was in force previously—more people died, particularly young male workers whose families thought they would see them again, but they did not come home. It is absolutely sickening, really deeply sickening. The figures bear this out. In 2005, just before the ABCC came in, the number of fatalities on building sites had actually been dropping: it was around 3.51 per 100,000. By 2007 it had risen to 4.7 per 100,000. It has been well documented that the ABCC puts lives at risk. It puts lives at risk because it is harder for construction workers to organise and harder for the CFMEU to be active on building sites. We have heard the minister proudly denounce CFMEU officials for trying to get onto building sites. They are trying to get onto those building sites to ensure the sites are safe. That is why more people died when the ABCC was in operation. I congratulate the CFMEU for its activities in working to improve the working conditions and pay of construction workers and for the work that it does to ensure that the people who build our homes, our schools and our hospitals come home at the end of the day. We all go home, and they should have the right to. So what we need—

Senator Williams interjecting—

I am happy to take the interjection always, Senator Williams. Why is the government—you would know this from your background, Senator Williams—obsessed with bringing in this legislation? Why does it want to deliver for the companies that give them so much backing? This is not coming just from a position of an obsession with marketplace Thatcherite ideology.

There is a real aspect of self-interest for the Turnbull government. The self-interest I am referring to is in the political donations that it picks up. The Greens' Democracy For Sale project has just been expanded. It has identified that since 1998, which is when political donations started to be recorded. to 2015 the property development industry has donated $64 million. It comes from a range of companies, from property developers, construction companies and related companies. The bulk of that $64 million goes to the Liberal and National parties, so it is not surprising that Senator Williams interjects. These issues are getting a bit close to the bone when we start making the links between the money coming in and how the government delivers. How does it deliver? It is delivering right now with this ABCC legislation. It has delivered in other ways. We have seen it in state parliaments, where the coalition weaken planning laws.

In New South Wales we had a fine piece of legislation that was introduced off the back of the very impressive green ban movements and resident action groups that were all over Sydney and other urban areas in the 1970s. They had such a strong voice that when the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act was introduced into New South Wales in 1979 the Premier of New South Wales actually paid tribute to the green ban movement and the resident action groups and said a foundation of planning has to be consultation with the community. But what did we see? When the next Labor government, the Carr Labor government, came in, hand in hand with the Liberals and Nationals in New South Wales, every year there would be amendments to weaken that legislation. Who benefited? The developers. At the very same time we were seeing a weakening of the planning laws.

I do not know what deals went on with donors behind closed doors with regard to the last election, when the Turnbull government barely scraped in. From what I understand, the examples that Senator Cameron and I have spoken about with regard to the Newcastle incident, where paper bags of money from developers were handed over to some Liberal politicians, are not actually such a common way of buying favours these days. I refer senators to the High Court case I have spoken about before. But the trend now is that the culture of the major political parties is: how do we deliver for our donors? Rather than governing for the common good—the public good—they think, 'Well, what will make our donors happy?' All the people sitting on the government side know that, with the ABCC legislation, they will be getting slaps on the back. They will be favoured at all their cocktail parties. They will be the centre of attention if this legislation goes through, and in no way should it go through. It is damaging legislation not just for construction workers who might be injured or might die and whose families would grieve; it is damaging to the fabric of Australia.

Why go after the CFMEU? Why have the ABCC legislation come in? Yes, the CFMEU is a radical and militant union, it is well organised and it is out there winning good conditions and pay for its members. If you weaken that union, you start to weaken the union movement across the board. Again, it is another way for this government to deliver for its constituency, the big companies that it works with so closely.

So this is a piece of legislation that we have great concern about. Is it a coincidence that the for-profit sector that gave the most money to the coalition will benefit the most from the ABCC? We need to start asking that question. I will keep raising it, because we need to focus on what is actually going on here. The government's stubborn attempts to revive this legislation mean the attacks from the ABCC on construction workers are well documented, and they are worth reiterating.

First, I would just like to go through some of the myths that the government has peddled. The government claims that the ABCC will improve productivity. That is always a favourite, but it is false. Even the sham Heydon royal commission noted that studies did not provide credible evidence that the previous ABCC regimes increased productivity.

The government claims the ABCC is about criminality and corruption. Being in this place with the likes of Senator McKenzie, Senator Cash and Senator Abetz when he had the job, I say: seriously! So many of those examples that I gave were, I would say, trumped up. So many of them involved CFMEU delegates and officials doing their job. Again I will say that I am not excusing criminality. I am not letting them off the hook. We know that the laws are in place to deal with that. Yes, it is a rough and tumble industry and, yes, people swear on building sites, but what those representatives of the government have been going on about is so often people, including construction workers, out there to save lives and get some decent pay for these construction workers when they go home. They are actually doing their job.

The argument about criminality and corruption is another one that is not true. The ABCC has no power to investigate corruption or allegations of a criminal nature. You would think again, from listening to the representatives from the government, that the ship would turn around and now we would have this wonderful body that can get out there and investigate these shocking crimes like construction workers having stickers on their hats and maybe swearing on a picket line. But no. That is not what it is up to.

The government claims the ABCC will not breach civil liberties. Again, this is wrong. Workers will be forced to be silent about questioning. For those senators who are still thinking about what their position should be, I would really ask them to consider this aspect of the legislation we are debating here. Workers will be forced to be silent about questioning. That means they cannot talk to anybody. This is Australia in 2016, and we are debating a law in the federal parliament that might do that to workers in this country. To do it to anybody is wrong. Workers will no longer have the right to silence or protection from self-incrimination. People have fought for those legal rights, and our forebears in our parliaments have passed legislation to ensure that was the case, but we are on the cusp of unwinding that. And why? Because this government works so closely with construction companies and developers that it has moved totally away from what the public good means and what one should be doing when one comes into government.

The ABCC also reverses the onus of proof, forcing workers to prove that they are acting within the law—again, a huge change to how our legal system works, something that we all should be questioning and not accepting. The government claims that the ABCC will improve safety. I have shared with you some of the figures on that—figures showing something deeply alarming: that many people who go off and don their fluoro for real reasons do not come home, because it is a very, very dangerous industry. This is probably the worst of the lies, because we are dealing with people's lives—their families, their friends, the wellbeing of so many people—because when one person dies on a construction site, so many people suffer.

During the last version of the ABCC—and I want to go through this again, just to really emphasise these figures—deaths on construction sites increased, reaching a peak of 45 lives lost in 2007—one industry, 45 lives lost. Why were they lost? Often these are very young workers. They go on the job and the boss tells them to go and do things and they do not know what their rights are. They do not really want to challenge it when they are not too sure. They want to keep their jobs. And what ends up happening? As Senator Cameron described, a concrete slab falls on them. He told us about the tragedy in Perth, and I relayed a similar incident that happened in Queensland. It sounds like they actually saw the concrete slab coming towards them—just horrendous. Surely there is some humanity here on the government benches to consider this.

In 2013, after the ABCC was replaced, the number of deaths in one year dropped to 17. Still, that is 17 tragedies—many more, because all those people would have had loved ones who would still be grieving for them. But it was a vast improvement. The weeks since the Prime Minister's attempted power play, setting up the special sitting of parliament, have exposed that this government's supposed concern over corruption and wrongdoing within the construction industry really is farcical. It is a cover. As I said in the debate on registered organisations, the government cannot come in here and be honest about why it is introducing this. If it were honest, it would say, 'We've got to deliver for our constituency.' It cannot say that, so it comes up with deception after deception.

So, what do they do? They attack their political enemies—the enemies of their political donors, the union movement. I think many people are aware of the truth. I think when people hear what is actually going on they want people to be safe at work, and they are concerned about how this is playing out. It has been made even clearer by the government's refusing to support the Greens's call for a royal commission into the big banks and the financial sector—a sector in which we have heard time and time again of alleged misconduct. This white-collar crime has affected the lives of tens of thousands of victims. This is where we have this huge inconsistency in how this government operates. And I believe many people can join the dots, that they can see that inconsistency, that the government is harassing one section of the community for its own political self-interest and, where it should be putting its efforts, sidestepping its responsibility.

If the government were serious about tackling corruption and criminality it would get behind the Greens's call to set up a royal commission into the financial sector. It would get behind the Greens's call to get big money out of politics, and it would get behind the vast majority of Australians who are echoing the Greens's call for a national corruption watchdog. We need that so urgently to hold politicians and public servants to account. But time and time again it was resisted. We saw it voted down again last night. Again, disappointingly, Labor was there with the Liberals and the Nationals. It is time to sort this one out. It really has to happen. It becomes quite farcical that of all the jurisdictions in Australia we are the only ones that have not had a national ICAC. The fact that it is not even on the agenda with the Liberals and Nationals really does further expose their double standards when they bring forward legislation like the registered organisations legislation and this ABCC bill.

This bill to bring back the ABCC is a linchpin in the government's ongoing attack on unions. Why? Because unions look after workers. Trade unions were founded for that very purpose, for protecting the rights and interests of working people. When you start undermining unions it means that you are undermining the collective ability of workers to organise and to be able to improve wages and conditions. So, what is going on here is very fundamental. But it is not something new with conservative governments. Again, I outlined it in the speech last night on registered organisations. When we have a conservative government, one of the first things they do, from the penal powers of the Menzies era through to the Howard, Abbott and Turnbull governments—their core business—is get out there with their anti-union legislation and push it through by demonising unions, demonising workers and lying time and time again.

This bill would give workers in the construction industry fewer rights at work just because of the industry they work in. It would give them fewer rights at work than accused criminals and even accused terrorists. It is seriously extraordinary that it has got to that point. With this bill the government wants to set up a new secret police in the construction industry. Unfortunately I am running out of time, but the idea that Nigel Hadgkiss may rise again and be the head of this star chamber is deeply disturbing—a man so committed to delivering some of the most ugly outcomes for working people. Where this government has ended up is deeply troubling.

The government wants to go out at the end of this year and obviously head off to the next election with claims of Australia's improving productivity and cracking down on the wrongdoing of unions. You can see the headlines in The Australian and The Telegraph now. You can hear the speeches coming out of Minister Cash and Prime Minister Turnbull. The lines would already be written up—their great victory, standing up for ordinary people, for mums and dads, for productivity. But it is all built on a lie: not only will it damage working people themselves, but many will not come home. We know that the number of injuries and deaths will increase, which also damages the fabric of our life, or our society. This bill should be defeated.

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. Our construction industry builds the offices, the apartments, the roads, the shopping centres, the hospitals, the universities, the schools, the airports and the other important infrastructure—vital infrastructure—that all Australians use and depend on daily. The construction industry is the third-largest industry in Australia, representing some eight per cent of our gross domestic product. Furthermore, the construction industry employs approximately 1.1 million Australians in one capacity or another. Indeed, there are more than 300,000 small businesses that fall within the parameters of the construction industry in Australia. Let us just recap those facts for a moment: eight per cent of gross domestic product, 1.1 million Australians employed and over 300,000 small businesses in operation. By any means, this is a substantial industry, and so important in the greater make-up of the Australian economy.

There is not a person in this place, no matter whether they choose to admit it or to feign ignorance, who is not aware of the toxic culture of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, or the CFMEU. We have seen this culture of intimidation, economic blackmail, violence and thuggery on TV screens, in print media and, for the most part, uncovered as part of the royal commission into the trade union movement. Commissioner Heydon—one of the finest legal minds in Australian history, I might add—described the deplorable union behaviour uncovered by this royal commission as 'only the tip of the iceberg'. The behaviour of unions, such as the CFMEU, is not isolated to their own operations. Rather, the effects of behaviour such as this flow on through the Australian economy, with devastating results.

As of October 2016 some 113 CFMEU officials are before the courts charged with more than 1,100 alleged contraventions of various Australian laws—an absolutely astounding figure. If we were to work that out as an average it would be 9.7 alleged contraventions per individual. The CFMEU must think that they are above the law. Do they? Is this what they think? They seem to believe that the law applies to all Australians but them. But it must be noted that these matters are before the courts and as they currently stand they are alleged. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in recent years courts of various jurisdictions have imposed more than $8 million in fines as punishment for the CFMEU's callous disregard for Australian laws. So brazen is their attitude that one Federal Court Justice remarked that the CFMEU's record of noncompliance with the law is 'notorious' and their record 'ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement'. This seems to be an embarrassment that those opposite do not wish to acknowledge, but they should, because the rest of Australia certainly does.

While some may trivialise the unruly behaviour of some unions, it is incredibly dangerous to do so. The rate of industrial action in the construction sector is nine times higher at present than the average across all other industries in Australia—a truly staggering statistic. To further illustrate this point, it should be noted that two of every three days lost to an industrial dispute in this country are lost from within the construction industry. Because of this and the continuing behaviour of rogue unions, the taxpayer dollar is wasted. The taxpayer must pay more. It seems that those opposite are content with that. The building of vital infrastructure—of schools and hospitals—costs 30 per cent more owing directly to that industrial action on building sites.

The ABCC is the proven solution to ameliorate this situation. The proven solution in putting a stop to lawlessness and thuggery in the building industry is the ABCC. Let us look at some facts about the ABCC. Before the ABCC was initially introduced, the rate of industrial disputes in the construction industry was five times the average across all other industries. During the ABCC's operations, disputes fell to just two times the average. But, on average, since the ABCC's abolition, disputes have gone back up to five times the average across all other industries. Since the ABCC was abolished by Bill Shorten in 2012, the rate of disputes in the construction sector has increased by 40 per cent, whereas the rate of industrial disputes across all other industries has decreased by 33 per cent on average. When the ABCC was in force, productivity in the construction sector grew by 20 per cent, yet it now remains relatively stagnant.

This bill will restore the ABCC as the industry-specific regulator for the construction industry. It will restore penalties to their former level. It will retain the current compulsory evidence-gathering powers but remove the sunset clause, and these powers are held by other regulators, such as the ACCC, ASIC, the ATO, Centrelink and Medicare. This bill will introduce new measures to deal with unlawful picketing and the disruption of transport and supply to building sites, including those located offshore. It will remove the inability for the ABCC to enforce the law where private settlements occur. Otherwise, it would be like police having no power to prosecute a driver for running a red light and causing a crash if the driver reached a private settlement with the other driver. This bill will enable a strong building code to be made for government projects. This will help improve standards and create a fairer playing field for businesses in the industry.

Despite the misinformation spread by those opposite, the ABCC legislation does not amend any workplace safety law. It will in no way prevent safety issues from being raised or addressed by employers, by unions or by health and safety regulators. Senator Rhiannon's comments were incomprehensible. All the stats show that, under the ABCC, the number of deaths and accidents actually went down, that productivity increased, that the number of days lost to strikes also went down, and that the vast majority of workers reported being much happier in their construction workplaces. But, since Labor abolished it, lawlessness has gone up again and days lost from strikes have increased. This is taxpayer money for infrastructure projects that is being wasted.

I would like now to turn to one case study examined at length quite recently by the Menzies Research Centre in their report entitled Constructing a better future: restoring order and competition in the building industry. The example relates to the Wonthaggi desalination plant in my own home state of Victoria. The Menzies Research Centre reports that construction of the Wonthaggi desalination plant at Dalyston on the Bass Coast of Victoria was commissioned by John Brumby's Labor state government in July 2009 and completed in December 2012, a full year behind schedule. Plagued by cost blowouts, delays, waste and excessively high labour costs, Wonthaggi exemplified the very worst of public construction in Australia. When construction began in late 2009, it was expected to cost $3.1 billion, an estimate that was itself considerably above the cost of similar projects in Australia. The Kwinana desalination plant south of Perth, for instance, completed three years earlier, holds approximately 30 to 50 per cent of the capacity of the Wonthaggi desalination plant, but it was completed at a cost of $387 million, only 12.5 per cent of the cost of the Wonthaggi plant. The final price tag of the Victorian plant hit a staggering $5.7 billion.

An analysis by Independent Contractors Australia found that, had the Victorian plant been completed with broadly the same cost-effectiveness as the Perth plant, the project should have totalled no more than $2 billion. Labour costs were locked in at an extraordinary level under a greenfields bargaining agreement struck in 2009 between the head contractor Thiess Degremont, the AMWU, the AWU, the CEPU and the CFMEU. This agreement allowed for 26 rostered days off, 12 public holidays, a picnic day, and fixed long weekends that coincide with the RDOs. It included not only superannuation and long service leave, a 17½ per cent holiday loading and annual leave, but also termination pay of an extra couple of weeks, a redundancy allowance of $5.44 per hour, clothing allowance, spectacle allowance, and six-monthly pay increases totalling approximately $200 per week. An extraordinary element was a tax-free living-away-from-home allowance of $700 per week, or $36,400 annually. Wonthaggi is barely 75 minutes drive from the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. This was struck at a time when the going rate for living-away-from-home allowances in genuinely remote areas such as the Pilbara was $400 per week. Wages at the plant were reliably estimated to be 40 per cent—40 per cent!—higher than those found at desalination plants interstate, providing trade workers with $150,000 annual salaries before factoring in the generous conditions and allowances.

For instance, a carpenter under the agreement earned more than $200,000 in wages and benefits—roughly twice the income of a school principal. Worse still, under the terms of the agreement the only direction in which wages could move would be higher. The greenfields agreement covering the plant's construction contained a clause stating that Thiess could only engage contractors who applied wages and conditions no less favourable than the wages and conditions provided for in the agreement for similar or equivalent work. Now, the effect of this clause is to remove competition between subcontractors entirely from the tendering process.

The desalination agreement locked in considerably higher increases in remuneration than those under standard CFMEU industry EBAs. Wages increased in six-monthly increments of 2½ per cent over three years, a total of 15 per cent over three years. Under the standard EBA wages increased by a lesser amount, while allowances were linked to CPI.

A lack of transparency in the tendering process added to concerns. The winning bid from the AquaSure consortium, which included Degremont Australia, Macquarie Capital and Thiess, was in fact higher—higher!—than the losing bid from John Holland. Industrial relations commentator Robert Gottliebsen wrote that the Leighton subsidiary John Holland, which had not done the deal from hell with the unions, actually tendered a lower price for the desalination plant than Leighton's other construction subsidiary Theiss. But the Victorian government took the higher tender. It took the higher tender to look after its union mates who had secured this truly amazing deal from the Theiss-Leighton subsidiary. Leighton also gave some iron-clad price guarantees.

There is an enormous cultural difference between John Holland and Theiss, which gives the union what they want because they can add it on to the price, management style. Clearly, Thiess was awarded the project, at least in part, on the basis that it would assuage union demands and avoid disruptive industrial action. In turn, Thiess signed on to a clause that would ensure the terms of its 'peace at any price' deal were reflected in all contractors connected to the plant, negating any chance of competition. The cruel irony for Thiess and for the Victorian taxpayers is that despite such efforts, the project was fraught with strikes and other delays that ended up costing Thiess over $1 billion.

This is only one of many possible examples, but it is just as pertinent as the rest. To those opposite today I say that while Labor did not support its two million union members last night in voting against the registered organisations bill, there is still a chance to do so here. There is still a chance for you to do so today. These are your constituents; these are the people you represent. It is your responsibility to do right by them. Vote for this legislation. Vote for this legislation so that we can return the rule of law to our construction sector. Vote for this legislation to make our construction sites safer, to make our construction sites fairer and to make our construction sites free of coercion and free of intimidation and, so importantly, to improve competition in the construction industry—not just in Victoria but all over Australia.

Allow Australia to build the vital infrastructure it needs in a fair and cost-effective manner. This is the only way; it is the proven way to ensure that the Australian economy has the chance to flourish, to thrive and to prosper.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013, because, whilst a lot of people have talked about workplaces and costs and other things, it is not until you actually start putting it into the perspective of things that people consider to be important that you understand just how critical these issues are. Looking at the Defence budget, the defence white paper looks at the amount of investment that is going to go into infrastructure—we are talking civil works and building works—and if you look at the actual dollar figure over the next 10 years, for the first time we actually have a very clear picture, because of the way this white paper and the Integrated Investment Plan has been put together, of the actual amount that is going to be spent on infrastructure, and it is in the tens of billions of dollars. If you overlay that at the same time with various reports that have been made by external accounting companies, and also a recent report by the Menzies Research Centre, what you see is that the scale of the inefficiencies can be anything from around 10 per cent up towards 30 per cent. I am a conservative kind of guy so I will take the lower figure of that. But even if you take that 10 per cent figure, what you realise is that you can very quickly show that lawlessness on worksites stands to cost the Australian taxpayer, in the Defence portfolio, some billions of dollars.

If you consider that one of the most recent acquisitions for the Navy, the Romeo helicopter, which is considered to be one of the world's best submarine-hunting helicopters, was acquired at less than $2 billion, what you see is that Defence would have to be spending billions of dollars—so potentially another whole fleet of helicopters, which means a whole area of capability—unnecessarily, if the inefficiencies in our construction sector continue. So with MYEFO coming up, when we are looking, potentially, at the kind of budget issues such as the structural spending that has been locked in for a number of years now, and that we have sought in this place to undo, budget pressure is going to come on and that is going to impact on the money we want to spend on road infrastructure, on hospitals, on schools, or on our defence budget. It is inexcusable that we would expect the Australian public to be seeing a department of this government spending billions of dollars unnecessarily on infrastructure, when they could have the same infrastructure at a lower cost and return that money either to the Defence budget so that we could procure more capability we need, or, more likely, actually return that money to consolidated revenue so it could go into any number of other areas that Australians believe are important.

In South Australia, the state Labor government has commissioned a hospital that is reported by various people to be one of the world's most expensive buildings in terms of the dollar cost per square metre of the building. I note that it is still not open, well after its due date, and it may be quite a few months if not late next year before we finally see patients in there. But even that, the most expensive building in the world, is still cheaper than the money that defence will have to spend unnecessarily on infrastructure works it is doing if the ABCC bill is not passed.

So, as people consider this bill what I would invite them to do is consider the fact that this bill is not going to impact on workplace safety. This bill is all about getting rid of the lawlessness on worksites that we see reported week after week in the media. We see union officials in court being charged with various offences, and we see the cost impacts. With those figures I talked about for the Menzies Research Centre, I took their lower estimate. If you took their upper estimate of around 30 per cent, and that is less than other estimates which are the artificially inflated costs for construction in Australia, then the Australian taxpayer will be unnecessarily spending between $7 billion and $8 billion on the Defence budget alone. Mr Acting Deputy President, you are reasonable man, and so I ask you how could we expect the Australian taxpayer to think that that was a good use of the money which we are stewarding on their behalf? Speaking for myself and for this side of the chamber, we cannot—it is indefensible.

We cannot allow the lawlessness to continue on worksites. It creates the kind of inefficiencies that artificially bump up those prices so that people in our departments who are spending money on infrastructure have to spend unnecessary money. Sometimes people say to me, 'What do you mean by inefficiencies?' What are some of the examples when people talk about inefficiencies? Some of the stories that have been reported are things like concrete pours, where the pour starts and then somebody comes along and says, 'Stop the pour.' It could be there is a workplace condition which they do not believe has been met; or perhaps they are unhappy with the employer because he has not signed the agreement that gives them the leave they want. As you would know, Mr Acting Deputy President, the media has recently been reporting agreements signed between some of the large construction companies and the CFMEU which give quite large pay rises and all kinds of additional leave. The critical thing is the action on the worksite. If you imagine the cost and the time of doing a large pour which is disrupted part way through such that it has to stop, you then have remedial works to extract that which has already been poured and redo all the formwork or to do additional engineering works to work out whether it is even possible to continue the pour at a later time. There is also the issue of concrete that is perhaps waiting in trucks just off the site and what happens to that.

One simple act on one day on the worksite can set back a project weeks in time and tens of thousands of dollars in money. Those kinds of actions are pursued in an almost bloody-minded manner by some unions and then there are the illegal actions—the blockading, the bullying of people on worksites. All those sorts of things have an impact which can lead to five, 10 and up to 30 per cent inefficiency on our civil construction sites. As I say, when you look at something like the Defence budget, where we are finally restoring the funding for Defence and, for the first time ever, we are not just calculating the cost of buying the equipment over 10 years—that is an easy thing. People like to say, 'These many tanks or planes or ships will cost us whatever,' but that is not a real capability unless you have the infrastructure behind it—whether that is new runways or new hangers or new wharves that are required. It is all that infrastructure spending that Defence will be doing that is a critical in building the Defence capability that we need to have.

Why should the Australian taxpayer accept the fact that the votes of 30-odd people in this Senate could cost the country billions of dollars that it does not have to spend? How can that be justified? The Australian public quite rightly should be asking the question: why does the Defence department have to spend billions of dollars unnecessarily because of the decision of 30-odd people in the Senate chamber who decide to support, in this case, the CFMEU, which has been widely reported and acknowledged as one of the unions with the worst record of illegal activity and people who are before the courts as a result of that illegal activity and have complete disregard for the law? If there was a valid reason—if all of these things were actually changing the safety outcomes—there might be even part of the case. But, given the costs and the disruption and the fact that it is not having that effect, this is not about workplace safety. And there are lots of reports—longitudinal studies and reports about rates of accidents—that show that this change is not about safety. This change is about increasing the productivity and the lawful behaviour on work sites.

Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, I would encourage you and people on your side of the chamber, as you go back and speak to your constituents at the end of this week and over the weekend, as you hear the calls for funding, whether it is in legal and community services, health, or road infrastructure, to think of the billions of dollars that your votes will constrain spending, in this case, by the defence department, completely unnecessarily. It should not be so. The nation entrust the moneys that we raise through tax to us as parliamentarians and the executive government to spend wisely on their behalf. This is not a good use of that money, and it is not good to see billions of dollars spent unnecessarily.

I conclude my contribution by drawing people's attention back to something they think is important. Everyone says: 'Great. We love to see you spending more on defence. It is great you are going be able to spend up to two per cent of GDP on defence. It is about time we did that.' But they may not understand that there are billions of dollars that have to go into infrastructure, tens of billions of dollars that we know we will be spending over the next 10 years and billions that are unnecessarily being wasted because of the illegal activity and inefficiency on worksites. I would ask those of you on the other side of the chamber to decide whether your 30-odd votes are actually in the national interests or whether they are purely in the interests of the union movement, as so many of you are here, I understand, because of their patronage and support.

At the end of the day, each of us is here predominantly in the national interest. If we are not here in the national interest, then we should be considering our positions. I will certainly be supporting this bill because it is in the national interest of this country to have safe but efficient and effective workplaces so that we can attract investment, create jobs and build a better nation not only for ourselves but, more importantly, for the generations to come.

Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What we have here is the Prime Minister's get-out-of-jail-free card. It is safe territory for the Prime Minister. He has clearly besieged at the moment. He is leading a party that is incredibly divided, and divided on all sorts of issues. But there is one thing that unites the Tories, and it is making sure that you do all you can to dump on the union movement—a bit of good old-fashioned union bashing! Nothing brings those disparate voices within the coalition closer together than a bit of good old-fashioned union bashing.

Do you remember it was the reason we went to the double dissolution election? A lot of people have forgotten, because it was the legislation that dare not speak its name. It was the trigger for the double dissolution election—not a peep for the entire duration of that election campaign and not a peep for months afterwards. And so here we are, on the back of a late-night sitting last night, with legislation rammed through thanks to the support of the crossbench and people like Nick Xenophon who thought this legislation was so critical that after five months we had to sit until three in the morning to pass it. And here we are now, debating the abolition of the ABCC.

When it comes to tackling corruption in this country, the government is not interested in tax manipulation or scandals. We have heard about lots of them within the banking and the financial sector. They are not interested in corruption within the Public Service. We have heard evidence of that, with many examples within state parliaments. The government seems only interested in tackling wrongdoing by its ideological foes—that is, when working people come together under the banner of the union movement.

We have heard time and time again about the misconduct and conflicted incentives in the banking industry. That is actually having a material impact on the lives of ordinary people. This is actually ruining people's lives; it is eroding their life savings and it means that many of them, when they face injury or the death of a loved one, are unable to get the sort of support and assistance they believe that they paid for. And yet we have the government refusing to support the Greens' calls for a royal commission into the big banks and the financial sector. Instead, what they want to do is to make life easier for unscrupulous employers and harder for ordinary working people.

I will just say to them: if you are so concerned about the issue of widespread corruption, why not get behind the Greens' call for an anticorruption watchdog? It is something that would have the capacity to look right across different sectors within our economy, not just at employees and unions but at employers, and not just at the construction industry but right across the economy—including the work that we do here in this parliament. But instead of supporting the creation of a national anticorruption watchdog what we have is the government intent on coming together and uniting a party room that is incredibly divided and, of course, resorting to its get-out-of-jail-free card: a good old-fashioned bit of union bashing.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, 'How did we get here?' Of course, we still are not clear about where crossbenchers are and we are not clear about what amendments have been negotiated. We are not sure about the role of regulation through extensive legal coercion powers. It is, unfortunately, much like last night: a bit of a black box at the moment. And let us be clear about what we are trying to protect: we are here to protect ordinary working people coming together, looking to defend their rights at work. Remember that the trade unions were founded with the purpose of protecting the rights and interests of the workers that they represent. Unions are nothing other than a collection of workers organising to ensure that their rights are represented in what is often an unfair and unequal playing field.

We hear time and time again that when things go wrong in workplaces it is the unions that actually step up and help to look after those people affected within the workplace. And this is true within the building and construction industry. We know that construction workplaces are unsafe. We know that there are many people who do not return home after being injured at work, and we know that some of them come to very serious harm. We know that families are left grieving because of unsafe workplaces, and it is the role of the construction union to ensure safety within the workplace.

What this bill does is give workers in the construction industry fewer rights at work because of the industry they work in. We are just singling out one industry and saying, 'Because you work in that industry we're going to strip away some very basic rights and we're going to make your industry the target of laws that no other industry is subjected to.' With this bill the government wants to set up what is effectively a new secret police within the construction industry. They are going to have the right to take workers off site, to pull them in for questioning and to demand answers of them. They are not going to have the right to silence—a basic right afforded to common criminals. They will not be able to talk to others about the fact they have been pulled in for secret questioning.

And let's look at the justification. You would think that with laws this draconian and this extreme that, clearly, there must be widespread evidence of gross malfeasance. When you are going to use such a big sledgehammer, what is the justification? What is it? No-one is suggesting that there are not issues in the construction industry—of course there are. As I said, there are people injured and dying, tragically, on construction work sites every week. There are many workers coming in from overseas or who are being exploited, working on $10 or $12 an hour. The government could be working to stamp out sham contracting. Even the title of the bill, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013, is confused and untargeted.

Let us remember this: when the Australian Building and Construction Commission existed, productivity in the construction industry flatlined. Once the commission was abolished, we saw productivity increase. Again, let us look at what the experience was when the Australian Building and Construction Commission was established under a previous government. We saw that productivity was flat and, when the commission was abolished, we saw a significant increase in productivity. What kind of wider economic effect is the government seriously expecting from this legislation? What is going to be the impact of this legislation? The answer is 'none'. If past experience tells us anything, it is that this bill is not about productivity. It is not about corruption. It is not about anything other than a targeted, ideological attack on the opposition. This parliament should not be so narrow and so petty that, as the centrepiece of the government's legislative agenda, it chooses to confront an issue like this. If this is the peak, if this is at the centre of the government's legislative agenda, then this is going to be a period of government with a clear lack of any coherent vision, a period of government that will be unproductive and a period of government that ignores the challenges that face us as a nation.

We could focus on the great challenges that lie ahead of us: catastrophic climate change and the role that Australia could be playing in bringing down our emissions, creating jobs and investment in those regional communities who so desperately need them and creating international investment around the renewable energy sector. We could recognise that we have huge challenges when it comes to addressing the structural problems within the budget. We have a revenue crisis, but we have an opportunity to be able to pay for the services and the foundations of a decent society through ending the rorts of negative gearing and capital gains tax, ending multinational tax avoidance and ensuring that we do not provide tax cuts to the wealthiest Australians—instead raising revenue from those people who can afford it most. Instead of dealing with those challenges, we have a government with no agenda, no plan and no vision, looking to unite a divided party room over a piece of legislation that strips away basic rights for ordinary working people.

The Australian Greens will oppose this legislation. We will ensure that we do whatever we can to strengthen the rights of people at work, rather than to weaken them.

Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Four letters triggered a double dissolution and a federal election on 2 July—though the government hardly mentioned those four letters, ABCC, during the marathon election campaign. I will give this bill its official name: the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. It is from 2013—that is more than three years of gestation. There have been thousands of words on both sides over the months and over the years—union bashing and union championing—and I do not intend to go back through it all. But I will make several points and refer to amendments that I have put to the government to improve the bill and to allay some of the opposition's fears—I hope. My comments reflect what I repeated during the auditors and whistleblower amendments yesterday: I am pro worker and anti corruption.

In reaching my position on this bill and the proffered amendments, I have spent a lot of time with ministers, shadow ministers, union officials—including the CFMEU, several times—and other senators. I will be voting for the amended bill, if the planned amendments pass in this chamber. If the bill is not properly amended, I am not afraid to vote it down. In my discussions with government ministers and the opposition, I have concentrated on several areas. I want to deal with them, but not in any order of priority or importance.

One major area is the protection of sub-contractors—the subbies. Too often, they are left holding the bag. Confected disputes over supposedly shoddy work or missed completion deadlines can see money—earned money—going from A to B but not getting to C. Sometimes it is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul in a stalling tactic which might otherwise see a boss guilty of trading while insolvent. A fast-track tribunal hearing with the disputed money held in trust is good idea and a possible solution, I believe. So I agree with Senator Cameron when he said earlier today that we must improve payment protection for the subcontractors. I also agree with him that we need incentives to encourage employers to take on more apprentices.

Another issue that has cropped up regularly in recent weeks is retrospectivity. A number of big companies that have signed five-year EBAs in recent times have expressed concerns that they could in future be locked out of government contracts. Of course, the other argument is that these bills have been around for a couple of years and so everybody on either side of the industry, contractors and the unions, are very well aware of all the details. With this and other pieces of legislation I do not like retrospective legislation of any kind, but maybe six months could be the buffer. So, with question time coming up, that is where I stand, and I will say, like last night, that with the auditors and the whistleblower amendments I got here to this position without making any deals with either side.

David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise also to make a contribution on these bills—the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. As you would be fully aware, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, the construction industry is vital to Australia's economy. It contributes to employment, productivity and to just about any aspect of the economy that you care to think of. The construction industry is vital and at the heart of it. It builds the offices, apartments, roads, shopping centres, hospitals, universities, schools, airports and other infrastructure that every single Australian uses every single day. In that sense, it is also Australia's third-largest industry, which highlights the significance of the construction industry to the economy. It contributes eight per cent to gross domestic product. I mentioned also that it employs people. In fact it employs nearly 1.1 million Australians. There are more than 300,000 small businesses in the building industry. They can be from sole trader plumbers and electricians up to very, very large companies that are involved in construction, employing many hundreds and in some cases thousands of Australians.

But there is a big problem with the construction industry in Australia as it stands today. There is a toxic culture in the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, which causes this big problem in the construction industry. This big problem creates issues that flow right through the economy, and that undermines the positive effect that the construction industry has on the Australian economy that I was referring to before.

As at October 2016, just last month, there were 113 CFMEU officials before the courts for more than 1,100 suspected contraventions. In recent years, the courts have imposed more than $8 million in fines on the CFMEU's lawbreaking. In the words of a Federal Court judge, the CFMEU's record of noncompliance with the law is 'notorious', and their record 'ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement.'

I would have thought that every single member of the trade union movement who is a member because they want to do the right thing by the workers and ensure that workers' rights are appropriately protected and looked after would consider those quotes by that judge, and the other evidence that backs up the big problem I am talking about, abhorrent. They would also reject those problems that we see, as demonstrated by the findings about the CFMEU and other unions.

How does this play out? What costs does this impose on our economy? Currently around two out of three working days lost from industrial disputes are in the construction industry. Given that that the construction industry represents about eight per cent of our GDP, the fact that 66 per cent— (Time expired)