Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 6 October this year there was an incident in my home state that shows that safety on a worksite is more than just a political plaything for those opposite. I can remember where I was when I received the news. I was travelling from Townsville to Mackay when they announced that two workers had been killed after being crushed by a 10-tonne concrete slab at Eagle Farm racecourse. Those two gentlemen were Ashley Morris, a 34-year-old, and Humberto Leite, who was 55. I pass on my condolences to their families and friends.

Media reports revealed that several workers walked off that job in the days before the deadly incident, with one worker quoted as saying, 'It is the first time in my working life that I have walked off a project.' A manager of the project has since been charged with two counts of manslaughter. In terms of the media reports of these deaths and what has occurred since, it sounds like a very, very tragic case. I will read part of the recent media report on the ABC news.

Two construction workers killed at Brisbane's Eagle Farm racecourse managed to escape one falling concrete wall only to be killed by a second, police have alleged, after the builder in charge of the site was arrested at the international airport.

Claudio D'Alessandro, 58, appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Wednesday on two counts of manslaughter, after being charged on Tuesday.

D'Alessandro was arrested at Brisbane international airport, where he was embarking on a spur-of-the moment, four-day holiday to the Philippines.

The report went on to say:

The court was told the men were helping to install a four-walled "foul water settling tank" consisting of four individual walls, each about four square metres and weighing about 10 tonnes.

The walls were lowered individually onto the floor with a crane, with the first three walls, once in place, being "tied" to each other across the top corner by use of adjustable temporary bracing.

…

A police affidavit stated that the men were working in a "pit" under D'Alessandro's instructions trying to lower the concrete walls when they began to collapse.

The pair managed to "ride down" one concrete slab as it fell but were crushed after the wall's failure caused a second slab to topple forward.

It sounds like a particularly horrific death for those poor workers. Again, my condolences go to their families and friends.

This was a shocking incident, which was made worse by the documents submitted in court showing that the deceased workers had actually raised significant concerns with their manager about the safety of the work they were doing in lowering the concrete panels into place. Yet those opposite want to reduce the ability of workers to raise these types of concerns, making it more difficult for unions to hold employers accountable for the safety concerns of their workers.

In light of incidents such as this, it is fairly remarkable that the government are still pushing the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill through in the same form it has been in since 2013. But I think this gives you an understanding of their motivation. This is just the latest plank in their attack on workers. The idea behind this bill, which was what the double dissolution election was fought on, had previously been rejected by this parliament a number of times. The rationale for the double dissolution was barely mentioned during the two-month campaign. It is really no wonder that their campaign was off the rails.

But here we are, almost five months later, and finally they are bringing this legislation into the Senate for debate. What we are seeing from the LNP government is a continued ideological attack on workers. We have already seen reports in the media over recent days that that attack is only just starting and that they are only going to push further and harder next year in a return to a Work Choices style environment. The difference is that they are doing it piece by piece these days, but the outcome is still the same. It is an attack on workers and it is one that Australians are waking up to.

It is also what we see from LNP governments across Australia. In my own state of Queensland we saw, on the election of the Campbell Newman government, a harsh antiworker agenda that targeted unions and did nothing for the workers of that state—and they are still paying the price for. This is an antiworker, anti-union agenda, and they are happy to pit the workers against other people in Australia and really play a divisive game in this country.

We already know what Senator Brandis thinks of his LNP colleagues in Queensland. But this is really following the LNP playbook that we have seen around Australia over a number of years. The mock outrage from the LNP about being on the side of the workers is really nonsense. The public are not buying it, and we will absolutely be exposing that, when we look at the examples that I have already given.

Whilst Labor are focused on listening to workers across the country, the LNP are focused on attacking them. This legislation is a great example of how badly the LNP government are faring. Whilst many people throughout Queensland are suffering economic uncertainty around high unemployment and high youth unemployment and uncertain future employment opportunities, in the last five months I have seen this firsthand in the time I have spent, particularly in regional Queensland. I have made trips to Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Gladstone over the last couple of months and I have had many meetings with communities, businesses and workers in that time. Not one person has mentioned the ABCC bill as being important in their lives. I think that the focus of those people is on the practical economic opportunities that they want to see in central and regional Queensland, where the future jobs are coming from, improving their local economy and particularly jobs for young people, because they really want to see the next generation of people growing up in regional Queensland getting the opportunity to stay and continue to work in those areas.

It is important to look at the motivations behind this bill and what is driving the LNP. Any resolution on this bill would only be a significant step forward for the government's anti-union, antiworker agenda. The government has said they will come back with further changes in terms of workplace relations laws that this government wants to pursue. It is part of an ideological crusade against workers.

We have all seen what happens when the coalition gets their way in the Senate. Their Work Choices agenda was a relentless ideological attack on working Australians. The Australian people clearly saw through this overreach and were happy to turf them out in 2007. It was through coordinated and effective campaigning that the union movement was able to oppose Work Choices, and those opposite have not forgotten. That is what happens when you try to take on blue-collar and white-collar Australians and attack their rights at work. Now they are trying to nobble these bodies who are best placed to oppose this antiworker agenda. If they can tie up these groups who represent employees in red tape, they can get more of their antiworker reforms through over the next couple of years.

I note that on three separate occasions the government has tried to get this bill through and three times it has failed. This is apparently one of the two bills that needed to be passed so urgently that they called for a double dissolution election. Only now, in late November, is the government bringing this back into the Senate. I also note that the Senate has hardly been overrun in the intervening months.

Last term we saw the absolute beat-up of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, conducted by Liberal Party supporter and partisan commissioner, Dyson Heydon. What has changed in this legislation as a result of a royal commission that went for 18 months—

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A point of order, Senator Macdonald?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, is that reference to a distinguished member of the judiciary appropriate in the Senate?

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. He was a former member of the judiciary when he was performing in that capacity. This has come up before and it has not been ruled out of order. Senator Chisholm, you are in order.

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What has changed in this legislation as a result of a royal commission that went for 18 months and cost almost $60 million? Absolutely nothing. Again, absolutely nothing has changed in this legislation, and no other legislation has been brought forward. But the ideological war continues.

I note with interest that Senator Roberts, when speaking last week on the registered organisations bill in the chamber, showed just how aligned he is with the Turnbull government's misguided views. Senator Roberts even tried to claim that he was the real battler in this scenario, railing against what he called a 'cabal of elites' in the union movement. What an alternate universe he lives in. Perhaps the union movement should feel proud that they have now joined the likes of the United Nations and global banking elites in the cabal that Senator Roberts believes is running the world. I am beginning to suspect that the cabal of elites includes anyone who is not Senator Roberts.

Going back to the government's motivations, let us not pretend that this legislation as it stands is about better workplaces or stronger unions. Those opposite have never wanted that, despite their protests to the contrary. Some examples of this include the fact that this government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to take any interest in the criminal rip-offs occurring at 7-Eleven. Even with new revelations we have seen over recent days with regard to Caltex service stations, I am yet to hear any government members speaking out about this issue in the media. It will be a real test over the coming days as to whether they are prepared to do that. They were happy to stand up and attack unions, but they remained silent while workers in this country were being ripped off, being paid below the minimum wage.

The government have also done nothing to look at the widespread reports of corruption and rorting in the 457 and temporary work visa programs. When you look at the government's actions as a whole, you can clearly see that the only interest they have in the workplace is when they think they can get away with a bit of union bashing and attacking workers. They are apparently opposed to red tape—unless it is red tape that restricts the rights and role of unions in Australian society. Perhaps if they paid as much attention to managing the economy and creating jobs as they do to attacking unions, our country would be whole lot better off. If they were paying attention, maybe we would not have the lowest wage growth since the measure started being recorded in 1998—a figure of 1.9 per cent over the last year. Maybe if they were watching the economy, the participation rate would not have fallen 0.6 percentage points over the past 12 months to 64.4 per cent, the lowest rate in a decade. And maybe if they were paying attention, they would have noticed that the participation rate for young people fell 1.5 percentage points over the past 12 months to 65.9 per cent, the lowest rate experienced over a 30-year period and one that is particularly being felt in all sections of Queensland.

The government do not have any long term agenda for our country and do not have any reason for being in government other than attacking and vilifying those who they see as their opponents. The government are asleep at the wheel. They want to attack unions and attack workers until Australia is a low-wage, easy-to-fire society, racing to the bottom on pay and conditions. The government are well on their way to tanking the economy. We heard recently that the government are moving away from their commitment to a 2021 budget surplus. Amidst this growing debt, the government are refusing to scrap their $50 billion worth of tax cuts for big business. This just shows you how wrong their priorities are. Add this to the lowest wage growth in two decades and the lowest participation rate in a decade, and you have a really poor outcome for people looking for jobs and employment opportunities. Trickle-down economics was comprehensively disproved back in the 1980s, but the government seem to be a bit late in learning their lesson.

So what does this bill actually do? It really goes to the ABCC restricting the democratic rights of people. The Law Council says that the ABCC laws are 'contrary to the rule of law', an irony lost on the Prime Minister, who previously claimed that the ABCC is required to 'return the rule of law to the construction industry'. The ABCC breaches the principle of equality before the law as well. Workers in the building and construction industry should be subject to the same laws that apply to other workers. This legislation extends the reach of the ABCC into picketing, offshore construction and the transport and supply of goods to building sites.

The Australian Building and Construction Commission does not deal with criminal behaviour but has criminal justice powers. It does not matter how many times the government refers to criminal conduct in the same sentence as the necessity to revive the construction watchdog. It does not change the fact that it is a civil regulator. The government's bill removes the current protection which requires the director of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate to apply to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue an examination notice. This is equivalent to the police being able to conduct a search without going to a magistrate to justify why they need a warrant.

History shows that when this commission is in place workplace deaths and injuries increase. I mentioned at the start of my speech the tragic deaths of two Queenslanders that occurred only a matter of months ago not far from where I live. If Malcolm Turnbull has his way, construction workers will be hit with a $34,000 fine for acting on safety concerns at work. This is clearly untenable in an industry that is so dangerous. Last time this was the case we saw more workplace deaths and more serious workplace injuries.

During the period of Work Choices and the ABCC under John Howard fatalities for all workers increased by more than 25 per cent, while fatalities for construction workers skyrocketed from an average of 2.5 fatalities per 100,000 to almost five fatalities per 100,000 workers. In 2007, when the ABCC was last in place, worker deaths on construction sites hit a 10-year high, with 51 workers killed. After Labor abolished the ABCC, workplace deaths dropped by 60 per cent. Analysis by the Parliamentary Library shows that when the ABCC was last in operation between 2004 and 2012 the cost of non-residential building grew faster than the CPI, so it actually cost more to build when the ABCC was around, not less.

Although the government's attack on unions is about driving record low wages even lower, it seems the Prime Minister and the Treasurer cannot get their argument right. The Prime Minister says the ABCC will stop excessive wages, whereas the Treasurer said it will support wages growth. With the lowest wage growth in two decades, you would think the Prime Minister and the Treasurer would at least get their stories straight. It seems this government will use whatever argument they think is most popular in order to desperately pass this bill—and we have seen that applied to other legislation as well, including the backpacker tax.

In addition to the economic argument being wholly repudiated, we oppose this bill because the ABCC restricts democratic rights. There will be a presumption of guilt under the ABCC. Workers will be guilty until proven innocent. This is a shocking reversal of the presumption of innocence. The principle that the prosecution bears the onus of proof against an accused is regarded as a cardinal principle of our system of justice. Criminals such as drug dealers are protected by the presumption of innocence, but under Malcolm Turnbull's ABCC legislation construction workers are not. This is nothing more than an ideological attack on workers and unions.

We on this side of the House recognise the importance of unions. They play a fundamental role in Australia's workplace relations system. They are created and registered for the purpose of representing Australian employers and employees at work. Unions also represent their members before industrial tribunals and courts and work with government on policy matters ranging from employment issues to economic and social policy. Despite the claims of those opposite, Labor supports strong and proportionate regulation of registered organisations and unions.

But it comes as no surprise to anyone that this government is constantly being overly alarmist when it comes to any matters remotely related to unions. We of course understand that Australia's trade union movement plays a critical role in our economy. There is a lot to thank unions for—everything from the eight-hour day to better workplace safety, to pushing for equal pay for women, to superannuation and to fighting for Medicare. The trade union movement has an important role to play in Australia's workplaces promoting productivity. Those opposite would have us go down the path of increasing inequality and increasing the entrenched disadvantage that we see in Australia at the moment. Their goal is not to support stronger unions, representing the interests of working people—their goal is to destroy the link between trade unions and the only political party which acts in the interests of working people, the Australian Labor Party. Their goal is to destroy the capacity of trade unions to organise and to bargain collectively. You can see through their mishandling of current public sector agreements they do not even know how to negotiate effectively and in good faith with unions. You could not see a clearer example of the government's antiworker agenda than that.

This government's workplace agenda of course ignores the range of entities and bodies that we have seen under pressure with various ICAC-related issues in New South Wales. But the government is doing nothing to deal with transparency issues around donations. There needs to be a stronger push by the government in regard to that issue over the next couple of months to ensure a review takes place. To wrap up, there is no doubt that this antiworker assault by this government will only continue. We have seen that over the course of the last week and we think that will continue. The government has already said that in media reports over recent days. I oppose the bill.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the union movement in Australia, tiny though it is, I want to thank Senator Chisholm for his defence of union bosses and trying to protect the privileged position that those union bosses enjoy, using the levies of their workers, given by the workers to the unions for serious matters, but we find those levies ending up in brothels, being spent on holidays or being used for real estate purchases by union officials. Senator Chisholm says that this debate on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill is about safety, it is about looking after workers. It is about neither. It is not about bringing back Work Choices, as Labor speakers would have us believe—it is about productivity for our nation; it is about giving people a fair go. It is about helping workers to achieve what they want to achieve in a free, open and bully-free marketplace.

Senator Chisholm spoke on behalf of the union movement, and well he would—his career has been as an official of the Australian Labor Party, who are funded entirely by the union movement. Without the union movement the Labor Party would not exist and Senator Chisholm would not have been able to be state secretary for a while; he would not have been able to be the campaign director for the Labor Party. We should always remember when talking about the union movement—I mentioned it was tiny—that ABS statistics show that no more than 11 per cent of workers in the private sector choose to join a union. You would think, listening to Senator Chisholm and others who will no doubt follow him, that the union movement is this great body that looks after the interests of workers—but only 11 per cent of workers in private industry choose to join a union, which means that 89 per cent of workers in the private sector choose not to join a union, because they see what the unions have done to our country and they see that people who even used to be members of this parliament, after they were union officials, have ripped off the workers' money. That is why 89 per cent of workers in the private sector choose not to be in a union.

If you take it across the board, only 17 per cent of all workers in Australia, including government sector workers, choose to join their union. That means 83 per cent of workers in Australia make the decision not to join a union, and they seem to get on okay with their safety issues. They seem to not be worried about this government bringing in Work Choices again. When you hear Labor Party people speak, you have to understand that they are wholly-owned property of the union movement, and they are fighting a life-and-death struggle to maintain the privileged position of some of the union bosses.

As of October this year, 113 CFMEU officials were before the courts for more than 1,100 suspected contraventions. In recent years the courts have imposed more than $8 million in fines for the CFMEU's breaches of industrial law—and, if time permits later on, I will go through some of those particular cases. So I am often absolutely amazed that Senator Wong, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, refuses to condemn the CFMEU's, but then I recall that she worked for the CFMEU before she came to this parliament.

These cases are not stories; they are court records. These are not political comments. These are comments of the judiciary, which indicate the sort of notorious category these unions have for noncompliance with the law. A federal court judge said of the CFMEU that they ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement. They certainly are an embarrassment to most Australians.

But I do want to get on and talk about some aspects of the bill. The important part about this bill is the cost to our economy. When the ABCC was last in power, before the time of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, the rate of industrial disputes was five times the average across all industries—that is, the rate of industrial disputes in the building industry were five times the average across all industries. During the time that the ABCC was in operation, disputes fell to just two times the average. On average since the ABCC's subsequent abolition, disputes have gone back up to five times the average across all disputes.

I am Queensland senator. We are very proud about the Commonwealth Games coming to the Gold Coast region. But, at the rate industrial disputes are going on the building sites, we will not be ready for the Commonwealth Games when they are due. It disturbs me greatly as an Australian senator and as a Queenslander that this union thuggery is putting at risk the Commonwealth Games. Again, if time permits, I will give you some examples of that later on.

After the ABCC was abolished in 2012—and who do you imagine was in charge of industrial relations at the time? Mr Bill Shorten, the current leader of the Labor Party—the rate of disputes in the construction sector increased by some 40 per cent. You can say what you like about statistics, but that increase of 40 per cent, with the abolition of the ABCC, is just mind-boggling. The rate of industrial action in the construction sector is now nine times higher than the average across all industries for the June quarter. The source of that is the ABS. Currently, two out of every three working days lost are lost due to industrial disputes in the construction industry—again, these are not Liberal Party allegations; these are the Australian Bureau of Statistics' actual figures. Infrastructure like schools and hospitals costs taxpayers up to 30 per cent more because of the extraordinary amount of working days lost due to industrial action at building sites.

Again, figures and statistics run off the tongue easily, but this is taxpayers' money invested by various governments around the country in schools and hospitals, but instead of costing $100 million it is costing $130 million. That is taxpayers' money that is being wasted because of industrial disputes. The economic impact of this lawlessness in the building and construction industry costs every single taxpayer in Australia real money.

I just want to again refer to the previous speaker in this debate, Senator Chisholm, who was making derogatory—and, I thought, unparliamentary—remarks about the royal commission that exposed so much union corruption. He said it cost $60 million. That is a lot of money, but can I just remind senators and those who might be listening to this debate that, thanks to Labor's reckless spending during the six years that we had Labor as a government, we are now paying $30 million a day in interest on money that Labor borrowed overseas. This royal commission was expensive, but it cost two days' interest that we are paying on the debt that Labor ran up in its six years in government. These things need to be kept in perspective.

The purpose of the bill is to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission that was in place from 2005 to 2012 until such time as the unions imposed upon Mr Shorten to abolish that commission. Why did they impose upon him to abolish it? Because it was interfering with the rorts and rip-offs, that particularly the CFMEU were involved in, in the construction industry. Labor did replace that with a much weaker building regulator, Fair Work Building and Construction, but their much weaker—and less telling than the ABCC that we are trying to reintroduce—maximum penalties for breaching the laws were cut by two-thirds. The fair work commission has no power to enforce the law when affected parties—for example, a building company and a union—have entered into a settlement. You know what they are about and, if time permits, I will give you some examples of that later. The ABCC's compulsory powers were retained, but are now subject to a sunset clause and will expire on 30 June next year, and there is no effective building code to regulate employer contact.

The ABCC bill will restore penalties to their former levels. These penalties will still be substantially lower than the equivalent penalties under equivalent legislation such as the Corporations Act and the Competition and Consumer Act, but, still, they are more in line with the seriousness of offences. The new bill will remove the inability of the law to be enforced where private 'settlements' occur. Under the current legislation, if an employer and a union settle any related civil dispute between them, even for a nominal sum, the fair work commission has no power to bring the proceedings or to continue any proceedings to enforce the law. This is like the police having no power to prosecute a driver for running a red light and causing a crash if the driver reaches a private settlement with the other driver. It takes away the law and allows these 'settlements' to take place.

The bill will also introduce an effective building code to be made as a legislative instrument under the act. This will impose a range of requirements on employers in the building industry. This does not apply to unions or employees; it is totally directed at employers. These requirements must be met by an employer that wishes to tender for Commonwealth funded building work and these include compliance with all relevant laws—workplace, taxation, safety and immigration. It seems from the previous speaker that Labor do not understand this. This building code will have a real enforcement on employers to do the right thing and comply with the law in relation to workplace laws, taxation, safety—I emphasise safety—and immigration; all of those issues. Companies will not get Commonwealth government work if they do not comply with this building code, which sets out very strict relations involving safety, among others. Employers who breach any of these legal requirements—for example, by underpaying employees, breaching safety requirements or employing staff who do not have valid work visas—risk being declared ineligible to work on projects funded by the Commonwealth government. The code will also protect smaller subcontractors from unfair practices by head contractors.

As I said, there are currently 100 or more CFMEU officials before the courts. The courts have imposed more than $8 million in fines for the CFMEU's law breaking. It does not seem to deter the CFMEU. They just levy their workers a little bit extra, so that they can pay those $8 million in fines. The fines, as they currently are, do not seem to deter the CFMEU at all, and that is why there is a need to increase the penalties.

The previous speaker, Senator Chisholm, spoke at some length on safety. There is not an Australian who does not want to see other Australians safe at their workplaces. This bill does not amend any workplace safety laws—in spite of what Labor speakers would have you believe. The ABCC legislation will not prevent legitimate safety issues being raised or addressed by employees, unions or health and safety regulators. The rate of construction industry deaths has been trending down for the past decade from 5.8 per 100,000 workers in 2003 to three per 100,000 workers in 2014. Even one is one too many. But to suggest that this bill will lessen safety standards is ridiculous and another part of the union scare campaign.

I will conclude with an example of the CFMEU thuggery that this bill is trying to address. In 2014, two Fair Work inspectors attended the Ibis hotel construction site in Adelaide, at the request of the site manager, to investigate possible right-of-entry violations. A number of CFMEU officials were at the Ibis hotel site at the time of the inspection. In the presence of the inspectors, the site manager asked the CFMEU officials to show their right-of-entry permits. No permits were produced by the CFMEU officials. One of the inspectors took photographs of the CFMEU officials and their interactions with the site manager.

A CFMEU official, who has been named in this parliament before, Mr Perkovic, approached the inspector, stood in front of him, pushed him and made a number of threatening comments, including, 'You effing maggot, what are you taking a photo of me for, you piece of'—S something something something.' Further: 'You effing coward, I'll effing take you to school. Your a effing piece of'—something beginning with S. Further: 'You effing piece of S. You're going to have a heart attack. Look at you, you're excreting yellow, you piece of S.' That is just one example. I have pages, but time is not going to let me go through them.

There is lawlessness in the construction industry and it is costing each and every taxpayer money. It is not about safety; it is about retaining the privileged position of some union leaders. I repeat: the unions only speak for 11 per cent of workers in the Australian industry framework. This bill is essential to bringing law and order back into the building and construction industry and to getting rid of the rorts and rip-offs that are costing taxpayers real money, money that could be diverted to hospitals, schools and other infrastructure. It is essential that this bill be endorsed. I know the Labor Party will never support it, and neither will the Greens, who are recipients are big donations from the unions, but I would hope the crossbenchers understand the absolute importance of having law returned to the building and construction industry.

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to oppose this bill, the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. I have to say that that is the first time I have ever heard a government senator say that one death in the construction industry is not good enough. It is something that we do not hear the government talking about at all. Unfortunately, we then went on to hear about the privileged position of union officials, and certainly—

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

Senator Macdonald, a point of order?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, standing orders require that senators not be verballed. My comment was: 'Even one death is too many.' I think Senator Lines might have meant that but her—

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She was commending you.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. Thank you for what you said.

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

Thank you, Senator Macdonald. There is no point of order.

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle. But, Senator Macdonald, to finish your contribution by claiming that, somehow, union officials have some kind of privileged position flies in the face of the number of deaths we have seen in the construction industry and the many times union officials have been prevented from entering sites to talk about safety issues. It is a shame that your contribution ended in that way.

If media reports today are correct we hear that some crossbenchers are prepared to trade human rights for water. Of course I want the best for the Murray-Darling Basin and for the Murray-Darling states, but simply to trade away the rights of workers for, perhaps, a better deal on the Murray basin is obscene. The so-called deals we have seen in this place in support of legislation are poor indeed. Last week we saw a deal made for the sake of a five-year moratorium on a particular aspect of a bill, when anyone who understands the Constitution and how governments work would know that you cannot trade away what a future government might do. So I am appalled to see today that there might be some water deal for support of a bill which absolutely, categorically breaches human rights, in this case the rights of construction workers.

As a former chair of the Senate Education and Employment References Committee and deputy chair of the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, I heard in the many inquiries that we held on this piece of legislation about its impact on human rights and how it breaches the United Nations conventions on the rights of association, the freedom of association and so on. This is what crossbenchers seemed perfectly willing and comfortable to trade away for a completely unrelated deal on water. They traded the human rights of workers for a water deal, which, as we said, may or may not be a good deal. Looking at the record of crossbenchers and their deal making, the winner is always the government—and the loser, in this case, will be the human rights of construction workers.

We need only look back at the disgraceful treatment of Mr Ark Tribe, who was persecuted for years over charges which ended up being dropped, to see how fraught, ill conceived, poorly constructed and unnecessary this legislation is. There are already laws in place to deal with issues when they get out of hand. Of course, I do not stand for that—if someone breaks the law they should be prosecuted—and it is certainly not what Labor stands for. But I too want to focus on safety issues in the construction industry, which are shocking. It is an industry where lawlessness relates to safety—and that is what we should be focused on. I want to talk about the recent tragic deaths of construction workers right across Australia over the last couple of months. These construction workers left home for work, were killed at work and did not return home that evening. Imagine the impact that seeing a death at work has on other workers on the site, the trauma of having to deal with your mate who has lost their life. And then, of course, there is the impact on the family and friends of that worker. Suddenly that worker is taken away from them, is no longer around, because they died at work—in Australia. That is something we should all be saying is completely unacceptable. It is something that we as a parliament should be acting on—but, seemingly, we are not.

I want to talk about the most recent deaths that occurred on construction sites across Australia. On Thursday, 6 October, at around 4 pm, two men were working in a confined evacuation at the Eagle Farm Racecourse in Queensland. They were installing tilt panels for a large drainage pit. There was not any proper access or egress. They had to enter down an embankment to perform the task. The grossly inadequate bracing system that was being used failed. This caused the first panel, weighing 10 tonnes, to come tumbling down. The workers managed to scramble out of the way. Tragically, within seconds, the second panel came down on top of them, crushing them to death. There was not any adequate exclusion zone in their work area as a backup and these two workers had nowhere to go.

On Monday, 10 October, while working on Finbar's Concerto Apartments project in Perth, 27-year-old German backpacker Marianka Heumann was applying sealant to speed wall panels surrounding an air duct when she fell 13 floors to her death. She was working for a builder who reputedly refused the CFMEU their legal right of entry to inspect safety concerns and is well-known for employing unskilled backpackers in high-risk construction jobs. As if to add to the heartbreak, builder Gerry Hanssen sent a bizarre email to Marianka's family following the incident in which he implied that it was Marianka's fault and she would have been sorry for letting everyone down. Further, when Marianka, just 27, a person here on a working holiday with full expectations that she would return home, fell to her death it was just business as usual on that Finbar site: the concrete pour continued. A worker fell to her death and a concrete pour continued! Business went on as if nothing had happened. The site was not closed. Blood and strewn work clothing were clearly visible and accessible, and there was no effort to ensure that the scene of the fatality was not contaminated. Finbar did not even call the police, because they were so busy making sure their concrete pour continued. That was left to an ABC journalist. It was as if the fact that Marianka lost her life did not even matter—an issue worth no more attention than a dropped tool or a broken machine.

Further, on Tuesday, 25 October, while working on the Porter Street project in Ryde, 55-year old Mr De Silva died when he fell approximately three metres from formwork deck onto reo bars. The bars were appropriately capped, but the fall was enough to take his life. Twenty-eight per cent of deaths in the industry are caused by falls from heights, and again in this case, just as in the Finbar case, the edge protection was inadequate. Indeed, at the Finbar site there had been five complaints to WorkSafe in Western Australia. Orders had been issued against Finbar, and one of those orders was around edge protection.

On Wednesday, 26 October, while working on the Probuild Melbourne Convention Centre expansion, a 54-year old boilermaker was killed in a crushing incident while operating a knuckle boom. This worker leaves behind a wife and two adult children, both in the construction industry. At the time of the incident, he was working alone, welding amongst steel frames. Workers and the occupational health and safety representatives were the first to attend the scene. These representatives—as you know full well, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle, but for those who are listening—are people who are elected from among their peers to be safety reps on site. They made an extraordinary effort to rescue the crushed worker and begin first aid. I simply cannot imagine the trauma for that family and their friends, and for those around who witnessed the fall and who began immediate first aid. Where workers leave home in the morning, they should expect to come home again at night without this horrible fear of death or severe injury in the construction industry, but that is what we have in Australia, particularly in Western Australia. These are needless deaths. There should not be any deaths, yet the deaths continue.

Again in Western Australia, at the Bennett Street site, where two temporary visa workers from Ireland lost their lives while they were on their tea break, unions such as the CFMEU had made more complaints to WorkSafe about suspected safety breaches at sites like this. JAXON, which is a big builder in Western Australia and has a lot of the big construction sites—along with Hanssen—is at the top of the CFMEU's list when it comes to making complaints about safety. The JAXON sites have attracted more complaints than has any other builder in Western Australia, yet we see nothing has happened. Two young Irish backpackers, whose families I met, tragically and shockingly lost their lives whilst at work. I know that union officials have been denied right of access to these sites—particularly from JAXON—at least 16 times, but you will not hear that from those opposite.

We hear a lot from the government, particularly the Prime Minister and the minister, about how this legislation, if passed, will improve productivity in the construction industry. They have not given us any facts or figures on this, and they are not a government who rely on facts and figures; they just make it up and hope their rhetoric gets them the line of the day. The Prime Minister and the minister have said that somehow this legislation in and of itself is going to improve productivity. If you look at the full definition of productivity, measured correctly, it includes fair working conditions, the right of freedom of association and the role of unions, which this legislation will clearly curtail, because that is what it is all about. Good productivity is where workers sit down with their unions and talk about issues with employers.

It is about fair employment and fair working conditions, not the $20 an hour that Marianka was earning on that Finbar site. That is what she was earning, even though the rate should have been higher than that. It seems as if she was being ripped off. After I raised the matter at Senate estimates, the Fair Work Ombudsman raided that site. At that Finbar site they will find, I am told, that, of the around 300 workers on site, about 250 are temporary visa workers. That is not a rare occurrence in the CBD construction industry in Western Australia; it is the norm that we have inexperienced temporary visa workers flooding construction work in the city. Marianka, who tragically lost her life on the ABC Finbar site, after two months—which is about how long she had been employed at the site—was regarded as one of the experienced workers. That does not add to productivity. So, when those opposite talk about productivity, it should also include a good safety record, and we do not see that in Western Australia at all.

You will hear from those opposite about how the number of deaths have gone down. We should not be counting any deaths. Zero should be our target, but they will applaud the fact that the number of deaths have gone down. But, actually, if you look at the period over which the ABCC legislation was in place you will see that the number of workplace deaths grew. That is a fact. As I said, we should be focused on zero deaths, not whether there were three deaths or four deaths. There should be zero deaths. But, of course, you will not hear that from those opposite.

You will hear a lot from the government about the militancy and so on of union officials. But, actually, CFMEU members rank safety as their top priority. They rank safety as something that they want to see improved on building sites. Is it any wonder when we have seen five tragic deaths over the last couple of months on building sites right across Australia? I know that in Western Australia deaths are on the increase in the construction industry. That impacts on productivity.

We hear nothing from those opposite. I have never heard the government say that it wants to act on these workplace deaths—never. It might try to pretend that as the federal government it has nothing to do with safety. Well, it does. Certainly it should be pushing it through COAG and doing whatever it can to make sure that workers come home from work at night. It is a pretty simple ask. Yet we see in Western Australia shocking things going on in the construction industry being completely ignored by the Turnbull government. There is the use of temporary visa workers. When we raised this as an issue somehow we were accused of being racist and whatever else. But the fact is you cannot have good safety, good productivity and fair working conditions when you have a site that is being run by temporary visa workers.

This is at a time in Western Australia when we have record unemployment levels. They are climbing in WA. I think we are now the stand-out state when it comes to unemployment levels. This is a state where the mate of those opposite Premier Colin Barnett has squandered the mining boom. He has absolutely squandered the mining boom. We now have unemployment at historically high levels in the southern suburbs. We know that in the construction industry in Western Australia there are a lack of apprentices. We know that even the Master Builders association, the government's mates, are calling for something to be done, because we have seen an absolute downturn in apprenticeship numbers.

When you look at the construction industry in the CBD, if it is being run through labour-hire companies and temporary visa workers are being used, is it any wonder we do not have apprentices. Those employers are quick to make a buck. I do not stand in the way of people making a profit, but let's not make a profit on the back of safety. That is wrong. We have seen a downturn in apprentices to the point where the Master Builders association is calling on the government and, indeed, has called on the federal government to do something about it. We have record high unemployment in Western Australia. We have appalling rates of death in the construction industry in the CBD. All of this simply goes unnoticed by the Turnbull government because they have an ideological hatred of trade unions. This is why they want this legislation. It is absolutely clear. If they were really concerned about productivity they would be talking about the death rates in the construction industry. They would be standing up and demanding we get to zero deaths in the construction industry. But, no. There has been absolute silence from those opposite on the issue of workplace deaths.

I will keep speaking out on this because I have met the families. I have seen that ABC Finbar site on St Georges Terrace in the city. It is a disgrace. It looks like a rubbish tip. Is there any wonder there are safety issues on the site when it looks like a rubbish tip? Yet those opposite do nothing. They bang on about union officials while the death rate in construction continues to climb.

James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to continue to the debate on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. It is pleasing again for the second week in a row on a Monday morning to begin on a positive note dealing with such a substantive and important piece of legislation. I hope this week proves as successful for the ABCC bill as last week proved for the registered organisations bill. I again commend Senator Cash for her leadership in this area and tireless efforts to secure the government's key election commitments in this area.

I will note up-front that I have listened carefully to the contribution of Senator Lines and particularly her comments about safety. I congratulate her for taking this issue as seriously as she does. I will just flag that later on in my remarks I will address some of the criticisms of the government that she made and respond to some of those issues. But I thought it might be more helpful to begin this morning by just talking about exactly what this bill seeks to do, what it is seeking to address and why the government sees this is such an important priority.

As I suspect all senators will know, this bill seeks to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission which previously existed between 2005 and 2012. When the previous Labor government abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission in 2012 it replaced it with a much weaker building regulator—the Fair Work Building and Construction body known as FWBC. In a couple of key and important areas the FWBC and the laws that Labor put in place are weaker. Firstly, the maximum penalties for breaching the law were cut by two-thirds. That has obviously had a very significant effect on the behaviour of in particular the CFMEU. Secondly, FWBC has no power to enforce the law when affected parties—for example, a building company and a union—have entered into a settlement. So if the union is able to coerce and intimidate a building company into agreeing to a settlement on whatever terms, the FWBC has no power to intervene, even if it is in contravention of the law. Thirdly, the compulsory powers, which the ABCC had, were retained but they are subject to a sunset clause that will expire on 30 June 2017. No doubt, many in the CFMEU are circling that date in their calendars and looking forward to that day, if this Senate does not act upon Senator Cash's bill. Fourthly, there is no effective building code to regulate employer conduct, another important matter that must be regulated.

What this ABCC bill seeks to do is, firstly, to restore the penalties to their former level. They were originally recommended in 2003 by the Cole royal commission, and so this bill is seeking to return to those recommendations. These penalties will be substantially lower than the equivalent penalties in other equivalent legislation—for example, in the Corporations Act and in the Competition and Consumer Act. Secondly, it seeks to remove the inability for the law to be enforced where private settlements occur. As I have mentioned before, if a union is able to coerce a building company into agreeing to a private settlement, the FWBC is not able to enforce the law. That is an extraordinary and unusual circumstance. If any related civil dispute between an employer and a union is settled, even for a nominal sum, FWBC has no power to bring proceedings or to continue any proceedings to enforce the law. This is the equivalent of the police having no power to prosecute a driver for running a red light and causing a crash if the driver reaches a private settlement with the other driver. We would never tolerable this in other areas of law.

Thirdly, this bill seeks to retain the compulsory evidence-gathering powers that Labor retained but which were due to sunset in 2017. That is a very important measure. Fourthly, the bill will introduce an effective building code to be made as a legislative instrument under the act. This will impose a range of requirements on employers in the building industry. It will not apply to unions or employees. These requirements must be met by an employer that wishes to tender for Commonwealth-funded building work. These include compliance with all relevant laws—it does not seem like a shocking or unreasonable requirement to me—such as workplace, taxation, safety, immigration, et cetera. Any employer who breaches any of these legal requirements—for example, by underpaying employees, which is an important issue raised by Senator Lines, or by breaching safety requirements, which is a concern to this government and to those opposite, or by employing staff who do not have valid work visas, which is a problem that all of us agree it needs to be addressed—risk being declared ineligible to work on projects covered by the Commonwealth. I think that is an entirely appropriate measure, given that taxpayers' money is involved. Importantly, the code will also protect smaller subcontractors from unfair practices by head contractors. That is a worthy and sensible initiative.

I want to commend to the Senate an article that was published in the Australian Financial Review last week. It was written by Gerard Phillips, who is a partner in the labour and employment workplace safety group at K&L Gates, which is a global law firm. He has gone through and analysed, in a reasonable and dispassionate way, the key measures of the bill. I wanted to share with the Senate his conclusion about some of the aspects of the bill. I will not read the entirety of the article but some key aspects of it. It appeared on 22 November in the Financial Review:

The bill proposes expanding the definition of building work to cover transport and supply to building sites. This is a necessary and desirable measure because as history has shown the Construction, Forestry, Manufacturing and Energy Union (CFMEU) has often pursued suppliers and transport companies to put commercial pressure on the builder. By choking off its supply line and pressuring innocent third parties, the CFMEU's tactic is to cause a collapse in the builder's resistance in enterprise agreement negotiations.

He goes on to say:

How any member of parliament could think that a provision dealing with this deliberate behaviour is a bad thing defies belief.

I agree. Analysing another aspect of the bill, the increased penalties, he refers to a judgement in which Justice Christopher Jessup stated:

…that the CFMEU's "record of non-compliance with legislation of this kind has now become notorious. That record ought to be an embarrassment to the trade union movement ... quite obviously over the years the CFMEU has shown a strong disinclination to modify its business model in order to comply with the law."

As Mr Phillips says:

These are very strong words for a judge and in the clearest terms possible he is making out the case for higher penalties. Quite simply the current regime of penalties, set by the former Labor government, is no deterrent at all to the CFMEU. Breaking the laws of this land has simply been priced by the CFMEU as the cost of doing business. Given that the penalties are obviously no deterrent they need to be increased to a level where observance of the law becomes the more desirable alternative.

That is an entirely reasonable point, and I commend that analysis by Mr Phillips in the Financial Review to the Senate.

What this bill seeks to address is the problem in the building and construction industry that has clearly been identified by two royal commissions, by extensive public commentary and by media reporting. As we all know, there are now more than 100 CFMEU officials before the courts. That is an extraordinary number. If any organisation in our society had a hundred of its members before the courts, we would regard that organisation as rogue, totally out of control and in need of action to address it. Clearly, there is something systemically wrong in this industry. The courts have imposed more than $8 million of fines for the CFMEU's lawbreaking—and that is under the revised lower maximum fines introduced by the previous government. Sadly, it is clear and it becomes clearer every day that this does not deter the CFMEU. If the penalties are not enough to deter lawbreaking, then surely the penalties need to be increased. Master Builders Australia has estimated that infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads cost taxpayers up to 30 per cent more because of industrial action and delays at building sites. I will come back to that point later on.

Large building contractors are currently free to lock out smaller contractors in the industry by discriminating against those who do not have a particular type of EBA favoured by the large contractor and/or by the unions. As we know, there is from time to time in this industry a cosy relationship between large unions and large construction companies that is to the detriment of small- and medium-sized firms in this industry. Big unions and big employers do collude and they do lock out smaller players from building sites.

The ABCC was abolished by Mr Shorten in 2012, and the rate of disputes in the construction sector has increased by 40 per cent. In all other industries, the rate of industrial disputes has declined by 33 per cent. So the building and construction industry has become spectacularly less harmonious and a less efficient industry as a result of the change in laws.

One really clear piece of evidence that there is a cultural problem in the industry is that the participation of women in the industry has declined in the last two decades, against the trend in most other industries. How can we attract more women to this industry if we cannot change the culture? This is an issue that I know many senators have genuine and sincere concerns about, and I would encourage them to apply those genuine and sincere concerns in other policy areas, in other spaces of the economy, to the construction industry.

As I foreshadowed, I will address some of Senator Lines' comments, Senator Lines made a number of comments about safety. It was certainly sobering to listen to her and to hear about the cases of workplace deaths that have recently occurred. I can only concur that they are incredibly troubling. I know that they weigh heavily on the minds of all senators—not just on that side of the chamber but on this side too. She is absolutely right to say that we should be pursuing a goal of zero deaths in the construction industry—in fact, in all industries. No worker in any workplace should be injured; no worker on any worksite should be killed. I certainly support the sentiments of Senator Lines' comments.

But this bill, the bill to re-establish the ABCC, does not make any changes to workplace safety law. Nothing in this bill changes workplace safety law in any way. It does not prevent legitimate safety issues being raised or addressed by either employees or unions, or, particularly, by health and safety regulators, who have the most important responsibility to ensure that our workplaces in Australia are safe.

Senator Lines mentioned that one of the encouraging things in recent times has been the decline of construction industry deaths. She is right to say that a decline is only a start, and that we hope to get to zero—and I concur. Nonetheless, I am pleased that there has been a decline. The number of deaths per 100,000 workers in 2003 was 5.8; that had dropped to three per 100,000 workers by 2014, the most recent figures available. That is pleasing and I hope that continues, and I see no reason why and I have heard no evidence that this bill will adversely impact that trend in any way.

What it seems to come down to for those opposite—and I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong—is that anything which reins in the CFMEU at all, anything which seeks to ensure that the CFMEU is compliant with the law, somehow means that workplaces will be less safe. That is tantamount to arguing that the CFMEU cannot do its job without breaking the law and that it is okay for the CFMEU to break the law because it has a higher end in mind which justifies the means. That is a really strange and unusual logic.

Unfortunately, we know the CFMEU has a track record of misusing safety concerns as a cloak for its other activities. There was a particular case that I think illustrates this very powerfully. Of course, the CFMEU has an important role in ensuring safety, but, any time it uses the thin veil of 'safety' to achieve its own objectives, it undermines its important role in upholding safety. It is understandable that people have become cynical about the CFMEU's statements about safety when it engages in conduct like that.

I quote from a media release from the FWBC on 9 July 2014. It has two important features, quotes from an important court case, by Judge Burnett; and the conduct of the CFMEU in a particular dispute:

Federal Circuit Court Judge Burnett has said the actions of CFMEU officials Kane Pearson, Joseph Myles and Shane Treadaway on a Brisbane construction site represented a 'gross failure of corporate governance on the part of the CFMEU and its affiliates'.

As we have seen in other cases, this is an extraordinarily damning indictment of the CFMEU by a judge.

In February this year, Judge Burnett penalised the CFMEU and the three men a total $38,500 for hindering, obstructing and acting in an improper manner on a Brisbane construction site on 11 February, 2010.

The media release goes on to quote some of the phrases and sentences that Mr Pearson and Mr Myles engaged in on the site. I am not going to even attempt to read them out, because I will have to stand here and bleep myself continuously, such is the nature of the language. But I think it is language which we are all familiar with because we have heard it in so many hearings and courts over the years.

One of the key things that were interesting about this was that Mr Myles, Mr Treadaway and Mr Pearson said that they needed to access this site, using their right-of-entry powers, for safety reasons. But Mr Treadaway brought with him an EFTPOS machine and was seen walking around the worksite with it. I acknowledge I have never worked on a construction site and I am no expert in construction safety. But I am not aware of any purpose that an EFTPOS machine could be used for to assist safety. I am aware of other purposes for EFTPOS machines. It could be used for taking payments, for example. It could be used to take the payment of union dues, for example. It could be used to sign up on the spot any workers on that site who are not union members and give them a speedy way of doing so. But I cannot see how that relates to safety in any way. That is one of many pieces of evidence that the CFMEU has abused these laws.

I turn now to the important matter of productivity, the economic impact of this bill and the importance of this industry. As I have spoken about before—and other senators have too—the rate of industrial action in the construction sector is far higher than in other industries. In fact, the latest ABS data, from the June quarter, shows that it is nine times higher than the average across all industries. This obviously has an impact on productivity. Currently, of all the days lost in the economy to industrial disputes, two out of three are in the construction industry. That is despite the fact that the construction industry employs only a small proportion of Australians, not the vast majority.

Infrastructure, as I have said before, like schools and hospitals and roads, will cost taxpayers up to 30 per cent more because of the extraordinary amount of working days lost due to industrial action at building sites. This is what the ABCC seeks to address. The construction industry is our third largest industry. It contributes eight per cent of GDP. It employs nearly 1.1 million Australians, and there are more than 300,000 small businesses in the building industry. There was an interesting article published in The Australianlast week, by Ewin Hannan, which detailed the massive total cost of this disruption and disputation by the CFMEU and the impact it has on our economy. A total of $100 billion worth of projects have, in some way, been delayed or disrupted by CFMEU activity. Some have already been before the courts, where the CFMEU has been found guilty of workplace law breaches, and some will be coming before the courts in the coming months.

The Prime Minister was interviewed by Neil Mitchell about this very topic on Melbourne radio on Friday. Of particular concern to me, as a Victorian senator, he highlighted how serious this impact has been on my home state. He said:

… let me give you some good Victorian examples. There are 270,000 Victorians working in the construction industry. There are 22 Victorian CFMEU representatives before the courts for breaching of industrial law. In Victoria over the last decade the CFMEU has been fined $4.3 million – to the highest level in any state. And they have been found to breach the law on building sites in Victoria on including a project for 58 schools, road and rail projects, Mitcham and Rooks Road rail separation, Southern Link upgrade, the Florey Neuro Science Institute at Heidelberg, the Simpson Army Barracks, Melbourne Institute of Technology.

I mean the CFMEU's lawlessness in Victoria is so well known. Now, if we can get the rule of law reimposed, restored in the building sector, that will increase productivity, it'll increase the ability of people to work in the industry because they won't have to get past the union, being able to dictate which subcontractor, which tiling contractor for example can get a start and of course it will, by reducing that industrial lawlessness, you'll reduce the cost of these union jobs.

That is a very important point by the Prime Minister and, in my remaining minute, I want to highlight a case in my home state of Victoria which has been adversely impacted by the CFMEU—something which I hope, with the restoration of the ABCC, will not be allowed to happen again.

One of the cases which the Prime Minister referred to is the Mitcham Road and Rooks Road rail separation and station upgrade project. A Federal Court judge has condemned the CFMEU for a 'pattern of contravention' of workplace laws. In reviewing a schedule of the CFMEU's previous contraventions, Justice Jessup found it painted 'a depressing picture' which 'bespeaks an organisational culture in which contraventions of the law have become normalised'. Justice Jessup's comments came as he penalised the Victorian CFMEU $48,750 and its official Joseph Myles $6,375 for unlawful conduct at the $140 million Mitcham Road and Rooks Road rail separation and station upgrade project. This is just one of the many examples of the way in which taxpayers and citizens are having good services, good infrastructure, delayed or denied to them because of the militant behaviour of the CFMEU, and it is yet one more example of why the restoration of the ABCC is necessary.

Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2016 and the Building and Construction Industry (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013.

It does not matter whether it is the Liberal Party under Prime Minister Howard, Prime Minister Abbott or Prime Minister Turnbull—those opposite have waged an ideological war against working people and their representatives, the trade union movement. But this ridiculous pretence, this charade, this farce—that the government's anti-worker agenda is actually advancing the interests of working people—would be laughable, almost comical, if the consequences were not so serious. Real people and real lives are at stake. I find it incredible that those opposite would actually think ordinary Australians would fall for their pantomime act when they pretend to stand up for workers. When John Howard as Prime Minister declared, 'This government is the best friend the workers of Australia have ever had,' it was simply farcical. Mr Abbott then took it to ludicrous heights when he declared that he was the best friend workers had ever had. The Liberal Party must take the Australian public for mugs, if they are going to attack the trade union movement and undermine workers' rights and then try to buddy up to workers and pretend to be friends with them. We know that, no matter how hard they try to pretend, attacking workers' rights is in their DNA. What those opposite fail to realise is that Australian workers can see through this facade, because actions speak louder than words.

When it comes to these bills and the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill 2014, two things are abundantly clear about the government's motives. Firstly, despite being the triggers for the double dissolution, passing these bills was not really the reason for the double dissolution. It has been almost five months since the election, and close to seven months since it was called, yet here we are debating these so-called urgent bills in the last sitting fortnight of the year. It goes to show that Malcolm Turnbull's decision to prorogue parliament and to call a double dissolution election was motivated entirely by politics. It was a blatantly political move, the primary purpose of which was to keep Mr Turnbull and his government in power. He knew that the Australian public were starting to see through his facade and he was rushing to get the election out of the way as soon as possible. But he had to deliver a budget first, to make up for the government's absence of a policy agenda. It is the people of Australia who are now paying the price for this political stunt. For all Mr Turnbull's talk about innovation and agility, this government is limping on, stuck in a quagmire, beset by internal squabbles and a budget deficit that deteriorates every day.

The second thing that is abundantly clear to the Australian public is that the government is continuing the decades-old Liberal tradition of waging an ideological war against the unions. So obsessed is this government with its attack on trade unions that in the last six months of the previous term it had no substantive policy agenda—except for some bizarre thought bubbles about states raising income taxes and the anti-union bills we are dealing with this fortnight. While the parliament should be debating real solutions to the challenges facing Australia, we are being dragged into this government's ideological battles and its obsession with organised labour. At a time when billions of dollars are being sent offshore through dodgy multinational tax avoidance arrangements, when there are reports of workers being exploited and ripped off by big businesses in the way they were at 7-Eleven, when there is widespread misuse of 457 visas and other temporary work visas, and when there are ongoing calls to clean up Australia's banking industry because of the way they are treating customers, this government's priority is going after the union movement.

As I mentioned in this chamber recently, even when the Liberals had a case of misappropriation of funds within their own party in Tasmania, they swept it under the carpet, allowing it to balloon into a much bigger issue. They did not go to the police, which they should have done. They did not bother informing people. They let Mr Damien Mantach get away with misappropriating funds, and every Liberal Tasmanian senator sat quietly over on that side and let it go through. They swept it under the carpet, because they were so concerned with workers' rights that they could not bring themselves to realise that bad things were happening in their own party. They are a disgrace.

Yet this government is obsessed with the trade union movement. Their ideological war has been waged on several fronts. One of those fronts was the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. That was $60 million of taxpayers' money spent primarily to pursue legitimate industrial activity under the guise of pursuing trade union corruption. This political witch-hunt was exposed as an ideological exercise when the commissioner accepted an invitation to a Liberal Party fundraiser. The best indication yet of the political nature of this exercise is that, now that the royal commission has concluded, not one piece of legislation has been introduced to the parliament and not one piece of legislation has been amended arising from the commission.

When a former Prime Minister told us Work Choices was dead, buried and cremated, this government has instead taken an incremental approach—a sort of boiled-frog approach, so to speak—to stripping away workplace entitlements. In the previous parliament those opposite introduced legislation that will make it more difficult for union representatives to enter workplaces or talk to workers. They attempted to reintroduce Australian workplace agreements via the back door by weakening the better off overall test. The government dumped Labor's Clean Start for Cleaners contracting principles, cutting the wages of cleaners who clean the buildings of government agencies, and their highly centralised approach to bargaining across the Australian Public Service sought to put strict caps on conditions and pay increases.

The government has flagged attempts to cut paid parental leave for thousands of parents, mostly mothers, referring to many of them as 'rorters, double dippers and fraudsters'. While those opposite learnt the hard way that Work Choices was a step too far, they have opted instead for chipping away slowly at the conditions of Australian workers.

Another front in the government's war was the registered organisations bill—the bill which, sadly, passed this place last week and was designed to bury trade unions in red tape in an effort to render them ineffective. Labor's amendments would have led to a bill that genuinely improves trade union governance, and the government's rejection of those amendments revealed something very sinister about their real agenda. It revealed that the government was not fair dinkum about improving union governance.

The latest front is this bill to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission. To understand what the ABCC is, we simply need to look at its record when it was previously established. It was a draconian body with extraordinary coercive powers that compromised basic civil liberties. The unfettered coercive powers of the ABCC included conducting secret interviews. Those interviewed had no right to silence, were denied the right to be represented by a lawyer of their choice and faced the prospect of imprisonment if they refused to cooperate. This could happen to any one of you—in the chamber, or in the gallery even—if you get on the wrong side of what this government wants. As Nicola McGarrity and Professor George Williams from the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales observed:

… the ABC Commissioner's investigatory powers have the potential to severely restrict basic democratic rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to silence.

This view is backed up by a 2010 report released by the International Labour Organization's Committee of Experts, who said that the ABCC was likely to breach a number of labour standards, including freedom of association, the right to organise, and collective bargaining.

These bills also remove the current protection that requires the director of Fair Work Building and Construction to apply to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to issue an examination notice. Removing this protection is like allowing the police to conduct a search without applying to a magistrate for a warrant. It means there is no administrative protection against abuse of power by the regulator. These bills extend the reach of the ABCC into picketing, offshore construction and the transport and supply of goods to building sites. In doing so they undermine the principle of equality before the law.

The government has failed to make the case for the ABCC's powers and lack of oversight. The government keeps bringing up examples of alleged criminal conduct to justify the reinstatement of the ABCC. Yet the ABCC, despite having justice powers similar to those of a criminal watchdog, is actually a civil regulator, so any criminal allegations the government brings up to justify these bills are simply a furphy, a red herring, and a distraction from its real agenda.

As with the registered organisations bill which we debated last week, the government's rhetoric on this bill implies that it is filling some kind of policy vacuum—as if the choice we have to make is between the ABCC and no regulator at all. The problem with that rhetoric—and this is what the government will not acknowledge—is that there is already a building regulator in place, and it is called Fair Work Building and Construction. Not only is there a regulator in place, but it is doing a good job. In fact, Fair Work Building and Construction is achieving better outcomes than its predecessor. Fair Work Building and Construction already has coercive powers which, according to its last annual report, were used 14 times in its 124 investigations. With the exception of an aberrant quarter in September 2012, the number of days lost to industrial action were lower under Fair Work Building and Construction than they were under the ABCC.

Since the abolition of the ABCC in 2012, productivity in the building and construction industry has increased every year. Fair Work Building and Construction outperformed the ABCC in many other areas. They undertook more investigations, concluded more investigations and brought matters to court faster. Despite widespread evidence of corruption and malfeasance on the part of employers the ABCC, when previously established, focused almost entirely on pursuing the investigation and prosecution of workers and trade unions. In contrast to the ABCC's record, Labor's Fair Work Building and Construction recovered $1.6 million in wages and entitlements in 2012-13 and closed 63 sham contracting investigations—issues which the ABCC comprehensively failed to address.

In fact, by targeting workers, the ABCC actually made the situation a lot worse for them. They compromised the ability of workers to campaign for workplace safety, which led to an increase in fatalities in the industry. A Safe Work Australia report released last year showed that there was a 37 percent increase in workplace deaths in the industry and that the rate of deaths dropped again after the ABCC was abolished. We heard from Senator Lines earlier about some of the awful cases of deaths in workplaces and how they were treated by the companies—not even calling the police, and letting concrete pours continue. You do have to stop and wonder what those on that side of the house are happy to support. I am not exaggerating when I say that the evidence of past performance bears this out. More workers may die as a result of these bills. I know those opposite will claim that I am being alarmist when I say this, but I take the issue of workplace safety very seriously indeed. When you compare the performance of the two agencies—the Liberals' ABCC and Labor's Fair Work Building and Construction—the verdict is quite clear. Those opposite are proposing to change a regulator which has proven to be successful, and which is kicking goals, with one whose performance has been thoroughly underwhelming. There can be no argument that these bills should be introduced because the means justify the ends. As history reveals, under the ABCC the ends would not be achieved.

To summarise, here is what the government is proposing: they are seeking to reinstate the ABCC—an institution which trampled on democratic rights and civil liberties and which undermined the principle of equality before the law, an institution which pursued trade unions and workers while ignoring corrupt behaviour by employers, an institution which slowed productivity growth in the building and construction industry and compromised workplace safety, and an institution which has had less success in concluding investigations and bringing matters to court than the current regulator.

I suggest to those opposite that they drop the pretence that this bill has anything to do with stamping out criminal behaviour in the building and construction industry, because I really do not think anyone is buying it. We on this side can see right through it, and so can the Australian people. The government's attempt to reinstate the ABCC is nothing more than a continuation of their ideological attack on the trade union movement. There is no justification for these bills. The only reason the government want these bills in place is to undermine, on behalf of Mr Turnbull's mates in big business, the bargaining power of trade unions. The entire motivation for these bills is the government's seething hatred of the notion that workers in the construction industry can organise together. It offends their sense of free-market ideology. So intense is their hatred of a united workforce that they are willing to replace a highly effective organisation with a dictatorial and ineffective ABCC. The very issues that the ABCC ignored—the rights of workers to safety, proper pay and entitlements, and an end to sham contracting—are the real issues facing the building and construction industry. Labor's Fair Work Building and Construction is dealing with these issues, and this government should get out of the way and leave it to get on with the job that it is doing so well.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Building and Construction Industry (Improving Productivity) Bill 2013. I comment first on the name of the bill—'improving productivity'. We know that this bill is not tackling the key issues that are required to improve productivity. This bill is basically an attack on unions. The ABCC has been hanging over this parliament for the whole 2½ years that I have been here. It has been the subject of a lot of debate. The Greens have been opposed to it from the very beginning because it is clear that it is setting out to attack people's rights to fair and reasonable employment conditions in the building industry. It was one of the triggers for the double dissolution election but then hardly rated a mention during the whole election campaign. That is understandable; it is not the key issue in the electorate. Most people are not concerned about supposed corruption in the building industry. But it is the concern, the fixation, of the government because they want to attack their political enemies. It is not about getting rid of corruption. If they were interested in getting rid of corruption, there are a lot of other things that we could be doing. This is a way to attack their political enemies.

Over the 2½ years that I have been here, parliament has exposed this government's supposed concern over corruption and wrongdoing as farcical. If there is criminality in employment in the building industry, if there is criminality by unions, why do we not address that through the criminal justice system? If the law is not strong enough then strengthen the law, but strengthen it so that it applies to all and is not just focused on people working in building and construction. The government is not interested in doing this. It wants one rule for its political enemies and other rules for the rest of business. The Australian people are starkly aware of this truth. It has been made even clearer by the government's refusal to support the Greens' call for a royal commission into the big banks and the financial sector—a sector where we have heard time and time again of alleged misconduct. This white-collar crime has affected the lives of tens of thousands of victims. So why is the focus just on unions? We already have a construction industry watchdog—Fair Work Building and Construction. Again, if there are things that are not working to address criminality then strengthen the controls in that commission. We do not need to set up another commission that is going to make unacceptable, undemocratic attacks on people working in the building and construction industry.

If the government were serious about tackling corruption and wrongdoing overall, it would get behind the Greens' call to set up a royal commission into the financial sector and the Greens' call for a national ICAC—an ICAC that would be a broad-based, national anticorruption watchdog with the power to look at employers as well as employees, not only in the construction industry but in every industry. It would have the power to look at politicians as well as public servants and decision-makers. Instead of supporting the creation of these two important bodies, the government is continuing its attack on unions through the creation of the ABCC. This bill to bring back the ABCC is a linchpin in the government's ongoing attacks on unions.

Let us think about unions and why they have survived and are such a vital part of Australian society. Unions look after workers. Trade unions were founded with the purpose of protecting the rights and interests of the workers they represent. We see time and time again that, when things go wrong in workplaces, it is the union that steps up and looks after affected workers. It is the same in the building construction industry, with the CFMEU stepping up time and time again to defend and to advance the rights of building construction workers. It is not the Office of the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate, which is what this government wants to turn into the ABCC.

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 or even accused terrorists. With this bill, the government wants to set up a new secret police in the construction industry that would have the right to take workers off-site and pull them in for questioning. They will not have the right to silence and they will not be able to talk to others about the fact that they have been pulled in for this secret questioning. This is not the type of Australia that I want to be living in, where we have a secret police that can pull people aside and they cannot even talk to anyone about the fact that they are being accused of these actions. It is a star chamber that they want to set up, without justification.

There are real issues in the construction industry that need to be addressed. There are people being injured and tragically dying on construction sites every week. Construction sites have the potential to be very dangerous places unless you get conditions right, unless you have all the watchdogs, unless you have the safeguards. When we see attacks from the government trying to reduce these safeguards, then we see an increase in injuries and deaths at work.

There are other issues in the construction industry. There are many workers coming in from overseas who are being exploited, who are being employed by labour hire contractors, who are working for $10 or $12 an hour. The government could be working to stamp out that sham contracting, but no. The government come along and say, 'There are problems in the construction industry and we want more powers to deal with them.' Are they coming along and saying, 'There are too many people dying in the construction industry every week'? No. Are they saying, 'We're finding too many exploited workers coming in from overseas, working for $10 or $12 an hour'? Are they dealing with that? No. Are they saying there are not enough locals, not enough apprentices or that there are not enough jobs for them? No. They are coming in and saying, 'We want you to give us more powers so that we can prosecute the very people at workplaces who are looking after the interests of people who turn up to work and who do not come home at the end of the day.'

We could be looking at sham contracting. We could be looking at the practice where subcontractors, who are under a lot of pressure, sometimes from big international developers, say, 'We'll give you a job, but only if you pretend you're an independent business, come along with an ABN and look after your own insurance and holidays.' The government could be tackling sham contracting, but they are not doing it.

Other parts of this bill also deserve attention. I am particularly concerned about the building code that is being set up by this bill and the limitations that that building code is going to put on enterprise agreements. Under this bill, if there is a clause in your local workplace agreement that says, 'We want to make sure that young Australians get a job, so we are going to guarantee that there will be a certain percentage of apprentices on this job so that young people can be trained up,' this building code will say that you cannot do that. If you want a clause in your agreement that says, 'We are going to give a certain number of positions to Indigenous Australians to ensure that they get a step up,' or, 'We are going to have some requirements about local labour to ensure that local workers get some of the spoils of international investment and the mining boom,' this building code will say that that cannot happen. The code will prohibit clauses that require employers to look for local workers first.

It will prohibit clauses that prevent unlimited ordinary working hours, which means that unions will not be able to place restrictions on the number of hours worked. That in itself is going to lead to an increase in worker deaths and work injuries because of fatigue, because of workers being forced to work longer than is safe. Not being able to place limits on the number of ordinary hours worked is going to really challenge the ability of workers to have stable and secure shift arrangements and rosters, which will impact on their family lives. It means the whole work-life balance of being able to go to work knowing that these are the hours you are working and that you are going to be able to get home to pick up your children from child care is not going to be possible. It means you can say, 'Yes, I can work tomorrow because I know that my children have child care,' and then be told, 'No, you are not working tomorrow,' or that you can suddenly be asked to work on a day when you do not have child care for your children.

This building code is going to prohibit union officials from coming onto the site to assist with dispute settlement processes. It is going to prohibit limits on labour hire and casual work. All of these things that have been included in enterprise agreements and included in workplace practices are there because they lead to much better conditions, lead to much safer and more sociable working conditions, and lead to workers actually having decent rights at work.

The key thing is that, by having this building code, this supposedly free market government are going to have a seat at every negotiating table around the country. They are going to be able to write what is in and out of our enterprise agreements around this country. They are going to be able to say, 'Well, you might have negotiated yourself some good conditions, but we don't think they are good enough, so by force of law we're going to take them away from you.' They are going to impose a code under this legislation that says to a subcontractor or a small company: 'If you ever want to get work on a government job, you'd better not promise to take on more apprentices. You'd better not promise to take on more Indigenous Australians. You'd better not give the union representatives the right to come in and inspect safety, because if you want that we're not going to give you any work.'

The government are claiming that they are improving productivity and cracking down on wrongdoing in unions, yet the Greens and the Australian people see this for what it really is. It is an attack on people's rights at work and it is a distraction from dealing with the very real issues of corruption and wrongdoing that span every industry. The Greens oppose this bill but, even more so, we want to stop the charade of attacking one particular section of society that just happens to be the political opponent of the government. So let's use this as an opportunity to tackle corruption more broadly. The Greens have for many, many years pushed—

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rice, you will be in continuation. The debate is now interrupted, pursuant to an order made earlier today to enable the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, to make an explanation.