David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Many Canberrans have seen the news of another building company facing financial difficulties, and I want to raise the urgent issue of security of payments for subcontractors and their staff. This has been a long-running issue and it is an issue that hasn't been addressed by politicians. That needs to change. We have to look after the tradies who are doing the work to build our towns, our cities and all the infrastructure that we rely on.

John Murray produced his report in 2017, but we've seen no action from either side. At best, subbies can write off as losses payments they were meant to have. At worst, we're hearing stories of subbies going bankrupt, going into financial difficulty. In some tragic cases, subcontractors have committed suicide after a number of projects fell over and they didn't get paid for work they had already done.

Tradies have the right to be paid for work that they complete on a building site. We have this report. We have ways of making this happen. What we need is the political will. Labor, in its election campaign, committed to implementing the Murray review. I would really like to see this progressed and to see this happen. Tradies cannot continue to be on the end of payments, bearing the brunt of building companies going under. We can't continue to let this happen. We have the solutions; what we need is the political will and the government to get on with implementing the Murray review.