Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm grateful for the opportunity to put some remarks on the record today in relation to the Housing Australia Future Fund and in relation to the justification for the coalition putting forward legislation later today that will put particular guardrails around the operation of the Housing Australia Future Fund.

You would have to have been basically not living in Australia over the last month or two to be unaware of the enormous scandal engulfing the CFMEU, and the unions and the Labor Party more broadly.

The government has now claimed that it is shocked about all this corruption and disgusting behaviour of the CFMEU which everyone knew about. Taking them on face value, they say that they are shocked and, as a result of their shock, they are seeking to put the CFMEU into administration. So the CFMEU goes into administration as a result of legislation passed by this parliament, but the government shows no interest in the CFMEU's best friends who are operating a superannuation fund called Cbus. The Cbus super fund has three CFMEU trustees on its board, and the Cbus superannuation fund is a significant donor and payer of funds to the CFMEU.

The Housing Australia Future Fund is seeking to engage with institutional investors to build houses in Australia. That is its stated objective. One superannuation fund has said that it would like to work with the Housing Australia Future Fund and that fund is Cbus—the CFMEU's fund. This fund is chaired by Mr Wayne Swan, who was a former Treasurer of the Commonwealth and who is currently the President of the Labor Party. Mr Swan, according to the Cbus website, is not the chief investment officer of Cbus; he is the president of the Labor Party and the chairman of the fund. But in his role as chair of the fund, Mr Swan has said: 'We believe investing through the HAFF'—by that, he means the Housing Australia Future Fund—'will meet the best financial interests of our members.'

Mr Swan has committed $500 million of retirement savings belonging to members of the Cbus fund so he can co-invest with the Housing Australia Future Fund. We think that is a massive red flag, because, if it is good enough to put the CFMEU into administration, why on earth would he leave taxpayers exposed to the CFMEU's activities through Cbus? Why would he do that? We on this side will not do that. We will move to protect taxpayer funds by legislating that the Housing Australia Future Fund cannot do business with an organisation like Cbus, which is run by the CFMEU. It is not an appropriate party with which the government, for the Commonwealth, should do business.

We have been trying to get to the bottom of these matters. Recently we filed a freedom-of-information request to try and work out what has happened between the Cbus super fund and the Housing Australia Future Fund. What correspondence has occurred between November 2022 and 19 July 2024? That FOI was rejected this government, a government which promised it would be transparent and honest.

To make matters worse, we also passed an order for the production of documents through this Senate last week with unanimous support, which was due yesterday, which was not being complied with. So there is secret correspondence between the Housing Australia Future Fund and the Cbus fund which should be made known to the public, particularly given the scandal. As I say, if it is good enough to put the CFMEU into administration then surely it is good enough to protect taxpayer funds in the Housing Australia Future Fund from the corruption and thuggery of this union.

This particular super fund has, as I say, three CFMEU trustees on its board. One of them has been on the board for 13 years, Ms Rita Mallia, and there is a Mr David Noonan who has been on the board to 16½ years. The APRA guidelines say you can only be on the board for 12 years—16½ years! Sometimes I wonder if we are in Australia or Argentina.

On the broader issue of the coalition between the CFMEU and the Cbus fund, in the last year the Cbus fund has paid $1.5 million to the CFMEU and it has established a Cbus Property organisation, which has done $6 billion worth of property work since 2006. What is very curious here is that we have talked at length about the CFMEU's 30 per cent tax on the Australian people, where, if you want to build an apartment building, you have to pay 30 per cent in grafts to the CFMEU. But interestingly, the CFMEU and Cbus have been exempting their own developments from this tax. During an ETU strike which occurred in Sydney in relation to Endeavour Energy in February this year, the ECU, which has a seat on Cbus's board, has exempted Cbus Property from their actions. So they are trying to destroy private construction but exempt their own vested interests here from their 30 per cent tax and their 20 per cent cut in productivity.

Productivity in the building industry is in the toilet because of the CFMEU, and all you have to do is read some of the accounts from the developers, like Mr Diaswati Mardiasmo, who says:

They're looking after the guys on site … enforcing the 'no ticket, no start' type arrangements, which mean if you're not in the union, you don't get to work on site.

"On large sites, there may be anywhere between five and 10 of these guys walking around, and that's a cost that gets built into the system, and it's a significant cost.

That is the cost that we're all paying.

In relation to the CFMEU and its engagement in my own state in New South Wales, there's another case which has come up recently, which is the Hakoah case, where the Hakoah Jewish club has been developing a site in east Sydney—it has a developer called Parkview—and there has been a dispute there. Hakoah alleges there has been a sweetheart deal between Parkview and some subbies where the subbies make payments off the books to the CFMEU and then, when Hakoah and Parkview have had a dispute, the CFMEU has been able to threaten to get pro-Palestinian activists to go down to this Hakoah development and threaten the Hakoah members and associates in order to get the best possible deal in their industrial dispute with Hakoah. They are putting the fear of a pro-Palestinian militant campaign into a Jewish club, which shows the length to which these people will go. So I think it's very important that we're clear-eyed about what we're trying to achieve with this legislation to be introduced today by the coalition. This is about preserving the integrity and probity of taxpayer funds.

It is true that we don't believe that the Housing Australia Future Fund is a good idea. We don't think that spending billions of dollars on housing bureaucracies which build no houses and spending money on executives and paper pushing are a good idea. But, because there are $10 billion of taxpayer funds invested in this organisation, we must do everything we can to protect these taxpayer funds against them being pillaged by the CFMEU and its Cbus constituent fund. If it were allowed to go ahead—if the Cbus fund could in fact co-invest with the Housing Australia Future Fund—you would see a massive exposure of taxpayer funds to criminal elements that are deliberately inflating the costs of construction. Perhaps the irony is not lost on the chamber that the government is seeking help from the CFMEU and Cbus, which are the same organisations that are making housing unaffordable in Australia. These are the people, through their disgusting corruption, that are inflating the building costs in this country, which means that young people can't afford to buy an entry-level apartment. So the idea that we would allow taxpayer funds to be exposed through the Housing Australia Future Fund to the Cbus fund cannot stand, which is why our legislation will ban the Housing Australia Future Fund from investing in any project or any consortium which is engaged with Cbus for the period in which the CFMEU is in administration.

If it's good enough to put the CFMEU into administration, it's surely good enough to protect taxpayer funds from being pillaged by the same criminal and corrupt elements. I look forward to introducing that bill later today.