Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024. I will say at the outset that I support this bill and will be voting for it. The issues that have been raised deserve to be properly investigated and addressed. It's in the best interests of construction workers that this bill pass urgently, because construction workers need a strong, effective industrial voice and a strong, effective union. It is clear that this bill will deliver the most effective way of delivering that.

The longer this issue drags on and the longer it takes to address the issues that have been raised, the longer it will be until we are back to having strong industrial representation for construction workers. That, of course, explains why the Liberals and Nationals are seeking to delay and draw out this process with a lengthy inquiry. We on this side of the chamber are coming at this issue from a very different direction to that of those opposite. We have introduced this bill because we believe every construction worker deserves to have union representation that always acts in their best interests. That is the motivation behind this bill. The Liberals and the Nationals come at this very differently. Their motivation in this saga is to destroy union representation in the construction industry altogether. It's just another piece of their policy puzzle to attack unions, destroy job security and drive down wages.

As the Liberals have happily admitted, attacking wages is their deliberate policy. Those opposite don't want the issues that have been raised to be solved. You don't need to take my word for it. Why don't you just look at their own record? Their first call in response to this saga was to call for the Australian Building and Construction Commission to be reinstated. What a farce! The issues that have been reported on all took place while the ABCC was active. They were supposed to be the tough cop on the beat, yet all that happened under their noses because they were too busy pursuing 'the real issues'—real issues like Eureka flags being flown on building sites. The ABCC spent half a million dollars on legal action to stop a Eureka flag being flown on a building site when the developer, Lendlease, didn't even have an issue with it. No-one—not the union, not the workers, not the developer—actually supported the ABCC action. It was an ideological farce.

Some of the other famous wastes of money the ABCC embarked on, with the full support of the Liberals and Nationals, included prosecuting the CFMEU for having COVID-19 safety posters in a break room, because the posters had the union and employer association logos on them. We know they launched cases about union stickers on hard hats. We know because they launched cases about union officials having a cup of tea on a work site. And my personal favourite—the half a million dollars the ABCC spent on losing an appeal to the High Court for a case about the CFMEU requesting a woman's bathroom be put on a work site. It was half a million dollars, and they went all the way to the High Court to prevent a woman's bathroom being put on a work site.

The ABCC was not a serious regulator, and those opposite cannot be taken seriously, either. That's not a matter of opinion; it's a matter of fact. The man those opposite hand-picked to lead the ABCC, Nigel Hadgkiss, had to resign in disgrace because he was exposed for intentionally misrepresenting the industrial rights of unions for two years. He spent two years lying to prevent unions and their members from leveraging their rights, and he got caught and he resigned in disgrace. This is the calibre of the ABCC. Of course, resigning in disgrace is a bit of a trend when it comes to the conservative ideologies—those opposite charged with attacking the trade union movement.

Another thought bubble that those opposite have had is to have another union royal commission. The last time they got into power they had the same idea. Unfortunately, it turned out that the most disgraceful conduct by anyone at the inquiry was by the man they put in charge, Dyson Heydon. For those who have forgotten, an investigation on behalf of the High Court found that Mr Heydon had sexually harassed six female associates while he was a member of the court. Mr Hadgkiss and Mr Heydon are the sort of company those opposite keep in their ideological pursuit of trade unions.

The reality is that no organisations in our society are more heavily scrutinised or excessively attacked than trade unions. It's one of the core principles of the Liberal and National parties: people should be deprived of the opportunity to join unions and collectively bargain. We have farces like the trade union royal commission witch-hunt and the ABCC, and then we had Senator Cash, as the minister, requesting that the Federal Police raid the Australian Workers Union—but not before tipping off every media organisation in the country. It was quite extraordinary: the minister of the day calling for 32 federal police to raid a trade union without appropriate cause. Then Senator Cash refused to be interviewed and refused to provide a witness statement to the investigation into that decision. For those that have forgotten, the AFP told Senate estimates in 2019 that they believed their evidence regarding the leaking of the raid to media may have been destroyed. When you have a federal minister directing police raids on unions and tipping off media ahead of time and you have the evidence of the tip-off being mysteriously destroyed, it really hits home about the environment the unions have to operate within in this country.

For these reasons, and for the good of union members, we know there is a heavy burden on all union officials to operate with the highest levels of integrity—and so they should—and ensure the highest standards of good governance. We know also that, when people do the wrong thing, it will be used by those opposite to smear working people fighting for fairness as a whole. That's why there is no-one more determined to ensure the best standards of governance in trade unions than the trade union movement and the Labor Party. There are some unions that operate in particularly challenging circumstances. There are some unions that have to represent their members in industries where criminal and corrupt conduct by employers is the standard for some of those businesses to do business and where unions and good, legal employers are threatened, intimidated and coerced.

In my view, there are few industries where that sort of conduct is more widespread than in the construction industry. I know firsthand because I've represented tip truck drivers and others in the construction sector. I can tell you that not a day went by without seeing people not being paid what they were owed. Not a day goes by without seeing workers being misclassified and having their wages stolen, their super stolen, their entitlements stolen. Not a day goes by without seeing workers put in unsafe, dangerous and deadly conditions. And, after transport, it is the deadliest industry in the country. Quite often, the reason for those unsafe conditions, the reason for those deaths and injuries, is that somewhere an employer, contractor or developer is cutting corners to save a buck. You never hear anything from the Business Council or Master Builders Australia about that. You never hear anything from those opposite about that. In fact, the Liberals and Nationals came in here and voted against criminalising wage theft and industrial manslaughter.

The ABCC, throughout its existence, did precisely nothing about safety issues, wage theft, super theft, sham contracting or any real issues impacting workers in the construction industry. That's despite super theft in the construction industry totalling about $420 million per year and wage theft totalling $320 million per year. That's $740 million per year stolen from workers. The only organisation that has done anything about recovering it is the CFMEU and other unions in that sector. We certainly never heard anything from the Liberals, Nationals or the ABCC, before it was rightly abolished, about that issue.

As an example, back in 2018, the redevelopment of the Royal Hobart Hospital was one of the biggest construction sites in Tasmania. The ABCC went out to that site on numerous occasions and never found anything wrong. But it turned out that there were nearly 200 Chinese workers engaged on that site, many of them on student visas or other temporary work visas, who had not been paid for six weeks. They had not been paid any of their entitlements. Many of them were victims of sham contracting arrangements. The ABCC, despite being at the site multiple times, never sniffed a single thing, but the CFMEU came in and in no time recovered $1.3 million for those workers. Decent companies who'd bid for that work—good construction companies who look after their workers—were outbid by a company that was stealing and thieving, and the ABCC did absolutely zip. That's more on one site than the ABCC recovered in wage theft across Australia in the preceding 2½ years. On top of all that, when the CFMEU had done all the hard yards in recovering the wages, when it came time for the ABCC to actually prosecute the developer—guess what? The ABCC dropped the prosecution. Surprise, surprise, surprise! It turned out that the anti-union authority didn't have a lot of interest in prosecuting dodgy employers.

The fact is that the work the CFMEU do in the construction industry saves lives. They campaigned tirelessly to criminalise industrial manslaughter, and that is now law. They campaigned tirelessly to ban engineered stone, which was driving a silicosis epidemic, and that is now law. While they were saving lives, recovering wages and protecting jobs, they were under perennial attack from those opposite, from the ABCC, from Master Builders and from others. It's not about any issues which have been reported on in recent weeks, which deserve to be thoroughly investigated. They do have to be investigated. That's why I support this bill.

Let's stop pretending that the Liberals, the Nationals and groups like the Business Council give a damn about the lives and livelihoods of construction workers. You never have before, and you certainly don't now. We expect we're going to have some ideological attacks, and that's fine in this debate. But we, on this side, want to get these issues investigated. We want them investigated urgently and thoroughly, and we want a strong well-run construction union representing their members' rights again.

I note that even Master Builders have called for this bill to be passed urgently and have rejected calls for yet another inquiry. Their CEO, Denita Wawn, said on Sky News yesterday:

…We desperately need this legislation passed, preferably this week, and certainly no later than next week's sittings …

It's not often I quote Ms Wawn. Andrew Tillett in the Financial Review over the weekend reported that Master Builders are not alone in telling the Liberals and Nationals to pull their heads in, saying:

The Civil Contractors Federation also called for the legislation to be passed as a matter of urgency.

Yet again, the delaying tactics of those opposite are supported by no-one and serve no interests other than their own political agenda. So, get out of the way and support this bill.

Dave Sharma (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

():  I rise to speak on the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024. Senator Sheldon said that we are coming at this from a different direction, and I think that is undoubtedly true because what we've heard from Senator Sheldon and his colleagues is that the Labor Party just wants to get rid of this issue as quickly as possible. They want to get it off the front pages. They want to take the minimum amount of steps that barely pass the test of credibility to make sure that the CFMEU can continue with its militant activity and pour donations into Labor Party coffers and that the climate of lawlessness that the CFMEU has presided over and fostered in the construction industry—the price for which we all pay as taxpayers, infrastructure consumers and home builders—can continue.

We have to remember how we got to this point today. One of the very first commitments and acts of this Labor government was to abolish the Australian Building and Construction Commission. In his media release of 24 July, the then minister, Tony Burke, said, the ABCC is 'a totally unnecessary body'. The CFMEU was pretty proud about this commitment being implemented. In their July 2022 newsletter, they boasted:

We manned polling booths, worked the phones, donated and talked to our membership on the importance of electing an ALP Government.

Now it's their turn to repay the working men and women of this country. The ALP made commitments to the trade union movement, NOW LET'S HOLD THEM TO ACCOUNT!

So the quid pro quo—pretty starkly demonstrated there—for the CFMEU's support for the Labor Party at the last election, including $6.2 million in donations, was for the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

In the 12 months before it was shut down, the ABCC had filed 17 cases against the CFMEU—one every three weeks—for alleged breaches of industrial laws. In a 2021 proceeding brought by them, the Federal Court of Australia found that the CFMEU had broken industrial laws by taking coercive action against a Newcastle crane company to secure a desired result. The allegations were very similar to what were aired by the Nine-Fairfax newspapers and 60 Minutes in their disclosures of last month. In fact, only two months ago, we heard from the then head of the CFMEU's Victorian division the same sorts of tactics that the Labor Party is now professing to be surprised about. At the time, John Setka threatened to shut down the AFL and AFL linked building sites unless they sacked the head of their umpiring department, someone with whom he had a personal grievance. Is this the way that a body that is interested in the welfare and interests of its members carries on? No, this is a body that is drunk on power, that is abusing its power, that is used to getting its own way and that is used to the government, particularly Labor governments at the state and federal level, bending over backwards to keep them pleased.

We've heard from those opposite and will continue to hear how important this solution is and how quickly they want it dealt with. But what they are trying to do is to fix a mess that they directly created. By removing the oversight and policing of the CFMEU, they clearly allowed the worst elements of its behaviour to flourish in plain sight. We've seen employers and firms around the country intimidated by the high price of union payback should they resist the soaring costs of CFMEU approved practices and contractors. This practice has been allowed to flourish because the Labor Party, in one of its first acts in taking office, abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission and effectively gave control of the sector to its supporters in the CFMEU.

We've seen criminal activity, threats, corruption, bribery, intimidation, violence, bullying, standover tactics, misappropriation of funds and other accusations of lawlessness as revealed by the investigative reporting. The Albanese government was warned this would happen, but they abolished the ABCC anyway. Tony Burke, in his media release in July 2022, said that the ABCC is 'a totally unnecessary body' and 'a politicised and discredited organisation established by the previous government to target workers purely for ideological reasons'. Well, it's clear that it was never an unnecessary body, and it's clear that its abolition has only fuelled the very misbehaviours it was created and designed to prevent.

We have a number of concerns about this bill. Frankly, we know why those opposite are in a rush to have it passed—so they can get it through with the minimum of scrutiny, so they can make a number of small cosmetic changes and so they can suggest that they are now dealing with what has been shown to be endemic corruption in the construction sector. But they've created these problems.

We think this bill has a number of defects, defects by design rather than by accident. Firstly, the draft legislation gives the minister far too much discretion over the administration progression. Under this legislation, the minister could stop the administration of the union at any point if he wanted to without giving reasons. That is unacceptable. We need to ensure that the administrator appointed applies not only to a select few of the CFMEU's construction divisions but to all of them. Under the current bill, as drafted, the minister could make a unilateral decision to end the administration of one or more of the state divisions at any time.

Furthermore, given the seriousness of the matter and the economy-wide impacts of corruption and lawlessness in the building industry, we need the administrator to be a transparent office which reports to parliament regularly. And we believe the legislation should also set clear objectives of how the union, and particularly the construction divisions of the CFMEU, need to change and reform before they are taken out of administration. But, at the moment, this bill just sunsets after three years, regardless of whether anything is actually achieved by putting the union's divisions into administration.

In short, this is a cosmetic fix only. It's designed to give the illusion or the appearance of action, but it ensures that the minister still holds all the power. It ensures that, when this issue is no longer on the front pages or dominating media interests, the minister could, if he or she wishes, end the administration very quickly, and the bill provides no benchmarks, no goalposts, no performance objectives that have to be met before the CFMEU can be allowed to function normally again. So we're concerned that this legislation does not go far enough, that it is just a temporary fix, and that is why we believe we need an inquiry into this bill—to scrutinise this legislation carefully.

This problem has been two years in the making, since the government abolished the ABCC. We've had two years of allowing problems to accumulate in the sector, and throughout that time we were told by those opposite, by the government, that there was nothing to see here, that the ABCC was a totally unnecessary body, that the CFMEU could be policed by the same sorts of regimes that govern other sectors. Well, manifestly, that has not proven to be the case, and so we think it's worth taking the time to make sure that we scrutinise this bill, that a committee is allowed to inquire into it, that we can make sure that whatever remedies are proposed for the CFMEU are sufficiently strong with sufficient oversight and sufficient transparency to give the entirety of the public confidence that the sector is being reformed and, importantly, to give employers and building contractors confidence that they are not going to be subject to the wilful intimidation and standover tactics practised by the CFMEU in the past, that they can begin to once again select contractors on their merit rather than because of fear of reprisals and that building costs can come down as a result.

We believe that, if Labor is genuinely serious about cleaning up this sector, then it would seek to bring back the ABCC or a similar body with greater reform and oversight powers. Rather than just put the construction divisions of the CFMEU into administration, they should deregister the organisation entirely and make sure we have penalties for breaches of the Fair Work Act that are fit for purpose. Since the ABCC ceased to exist and the investigations mandate it had commenced into the CFMEU was passed to the fair work office, the fair work office has, on my understanding, not commenced any new litigations against the CFMEU. In fact, the fair work office discontinued a number of cases that had been commenced by the ABCC.

We are struggling with housing affordability in Australia, we are struggling with overblown budgets on major construction projects and we are struggling with a shortage of workers. And so when we consider how important this sector is to the economy and we see the CFMEU practices which have become embedded and normalised in the construction sector, on many estimations these practices have added a 30 per cent price premium to big infrastructure projects. This has flowed all through the industry, and has resulted in many decent, honest, fair-minded businesses having to accommodate themselves to the CFMEU's preferences in order to remain viable entities.

Now we've seen all that, it's important we get these changes right and that we do not just adopt a quick fix to suit the political convenience of those opposite. We have this opportunity to clean up the construction sector and we should take it. I know those opposite are ideologically opposed to the ABCC—I frankly don't mind if we call the new body something else—but in the interests of Australia and the Australian economy and anyone who wants to build a better and fairer Australia, we need to make sure this part of the economy is properly reformed, policed and put on a firm footing.

The allegations that have been revealed in recent weeks are frankly mind-blowing, so that's why I would urge those opposite to give everyone here who wishes to speak on this bill to opportunity to speak to allow a full examination and open litigation of the merits of competing processes. Those opposite should refer the bill to a Senate inquiry so as to allow the Senate to conduct its work of proper deliberation, oversight and scrutiny. And those opposite should make sure we hear from those who have been affected by these practices in the building sector—many of whom, up until now, have been too intimidated to speak out. We need to make sure the minister of the day—and the government and the courts and our law enforcement agencies and civil society—has the tools that are the necessary and the platforms that are available to them to make sure we can stamp out this endemic corruption. This corruption is an incredible burden on our economy, and the practices have been allowed to continue for far too long.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome debate on this bill, the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment (Administration) Bill 2024, which is aiming to place the CFMEU into administration. We should really be aiming to place the CFMEU in prison. But this criminal union's puppets in the Australian Labor Party will never go for that—or go that far, for that matter.

Getting in bed with bikies and organised crime; criminal assaults on non-union workers trying to make a living; stalking and illegal intimidation of non-union workers at their own homes; organised wage theft on an unprecedented scale in the coalmining industry; economic productivity in free fall; major construction projects worth billions of dollars at a standstill; the renewables scam driving record energy bills and leaving families desperate and homeless; a national housing and construction crisis seeing major building companies go out of business every week: the CFMEU and their Labor puppets are directly responsible for all of these things, and this is mostly just in Queensland. And while Labor will deny it, the CFMEU will proudly proclaim what they've done and wear these crimes like a badge of honour.

Labor unleashed these criminals to hold Queensland's economy hostage, faithfully eliminating any and all barriers and checks on the CFMEU's conduct and power. The Greens and Senator David Pocock are accomplices to these crimes by backing the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the ABCC. This legislation we're debating today is a classic case of shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. I've heard the tough talk about big fines and jail terms, but I have no faith this government of union puppets will do anything effective to rein in the excesses of the thugs running the CFMEU. That's because Labor has enabled these excesses.

Right now Brisbane is hosting Ekka, the largest annual event in Queensland, with an average of 400,000 people going every year. For the second year running, people going to Ekka will be unable to use the Exhibition train station thanks to the CFMEU's protest delaying its safety certification.

The larger issue is the $6.3 billion Cross River Rail project, already months behind its deadline, with costs blowing out last year by almost a billion dollars thanks to the CFMEU. In May this year, CFMEU thugs physically assaulted non-union workers attempting to enter a Cross River Rail worksite to do a day's work. These gutless cowards can be heard in the footage saying that people were not permitted to cross what they called 'a picket line'. The entitlement is breathtaking. These thugs actually believe that standing in a line gave them the authority to ignore the law and physically harm people. Even worse, they followed one of the non-union workers to his home and committed another physical assault. This disgusting unwarranted entitlement has been enabled by the union's Labor Party puppets.

The criminal bosses of the CFMEU know that no matter what their members do, no matter what law they break, Labor governments will always have their back. It was there for all to see in the innocent denials from union-affiliated Labor ministers—that they were unaware of the CFMEU's links to organised crime and the criminal behaviour of some of its members. That's why the CFMEU has all the characteristics of a toxic weed. It will always grow back to harm the economy, harm innocent workers, get in bed with organised crime, and cost taxpayers and investors billions of dollars. Labor has been embarrassed into acting after years of enabling this criminal behaviour, but you'd be forgiven for believing that nothing will change. Labor is thoroughly cowed by the CFMEU.

Last week the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Brisbane introduced heightened security measures just for a press conference by the new industrial relations minister. They were obviously worried about CFMEU members crashing it—and they were certainly justified considering that a CFMEU protest last year caused criminal damage to the building.

This parliament needs to take a very long hard look at an Australian union movement that has mutated into a virtual mafia, holding the national economy hostage. Union bosses should be exclusively focused on fair pay and safe conditions for their members. That should be their only purpose and only role. It is not their role to force union membership on workers who do not want it—and that constitutes the vast majority of workers in Australia. They see the toxic behaviour of the CFMEU and they want no association with it.

In the past 30 years, trade union membership has fallen from more than 40 per cent of all Australian workers to less than 13 per cent, yet over the years the unions have used their Labor puppets to force union membership on people who don't need or want it. They don't do this to look after workers' rights—no-one believes that nonsense anymore; they do it to satisfy their naked greed for money and power they have not earned and do not deserve.

A great example of this greed was uncovered by my One Nation colleague Senator Malcolm Roberts. Senator Roberts's work has revealed what has been called the single largest case of wage theft in Australian history. This was a dirty deal between a mining company and the CFMEU that dudded thousands of Queensland and Hunter Valley coalminers out of an average of $40,000 in entitlements. Labor are now saying that they exposed it. Ha! The truth is that they washed their hands of it and did nothing. They didn't worry about these mineworkers in Queensland and the Hunter Valley. They walked away from it, and yet they want to take credit for it. That's what they're saying—that they did the work. They did absolutely nothing.

Another example of this was the now abolished Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. This was created for small owner-operators in the trucking industry out of business, funnelling their workers into the big freight companies, where Transport Workers Union membership would be forced on them. Thanks to a desperate campaign by small businesses, the Abbott government got rid of the RSRT. Another example was the terrible industrial relations legislation passed last year with the support of Senator David Pocock and the Jacqui Lambie Network.

This is a transparent attempt to force union membership on the farming and small business sectors, faithfully enabled by a Labor government that relies on the CFMEU for a lot of funding. Where was the new industrial relations minister when this was forced on the Australian farmers he was supposed to defend as the agriculture minister at the time? He was voting for it and promoting it. That's why I have absolutely no confidence Labor will undertake more than ineffective token measures against the criminal bosses of the CFMEU. This is evident in the legislation before us. It looks good at a first glance but, when you read it closely, there's a lot of wiggle room for Minister Watt to protect the CFMEU.

Describing the process for placing divisions of the CFMEU into administration as a 'scheme', section 323B of the bill says the minister may—the minister may, not will—determine a scheme only if he's satisfied it's in the public interest. Section 323D says the minister may vary the scheme or revoke a scheme. The requirement to appoint a general manager and an administrator reeks of another job for the boys. There are no requirements for criminal checks on these appointees. This is why I have no confidence this will rein in the excesses of the corrupt leaders of the CFMEU.

If Labor were serious about this, they would reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission as an independent body with the power necessary to hold union bosses to account. We must have a strong independent watchdog as a powerful check on union activity. It took a double dissolution election in 2016 to create it in the first place, with Labor fighting tooth and nail against it to keep their corrupt CFMEU money flowing freely.

We also need to bring back the Registered Organisations Commission and have another good look at the ensuring integrity bill. As I said earlier, I had my reasons for not supporting it before but I'm prepared to have another go. It may also be worth examining the proposal for an industry regulator made by Master Builders Australia—the construction industry compliance and corruption agency. Importantly, this proposal includes the agency being home to a permanent cross-jurisdictional police unit dedicated to targeting and eliminating criminal activity and organised crime. A more direct and simple solution would be to ban unions or any associated entities from making donations to political parties. There are bans on property developers making political donations in the Australia, as well as tobacco and gambling interests, so there should be bans on unions making them too. Corrupt union bosses are no less toxic to Australians than tobacco or gambling addictions. If Labor had any moral centre, it would refuse to accept donations from the CFMEU anyway. We know that won't happen. But they're too dependent on that money. The CFMEU is a parasite that Labor just can't get away from.

Perhaps the worst example of how corrupt union bosses are destroying the country is the renewable scam. Industry super funds, many of which have CFMEU bosses as directors, are some of the biggest investors in renewable energy. They made their Labor puppets set up the renewable scam which guarantees generous returns for these investments underwritten by taxpayers. Those returns end up in Labor's election coffers. It's the main reason behind Labor's childish scare campaign and outright lies about nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is the proven emissions-free technology that, if adopted in Australia, could effectively end the union bosses' renewables scam. As I've said before, you only have to follow the money to get to the truth of this scam which is crippling Australian households and businesses with some of the world's highest electricity costs. All of this needs to stop. Labor will not stop—

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted. Senator Hanson, you will be in continuation.