Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

He says I am wrong, but that is fine—you would expect him to stick up for his union mates. But for every dollar spent there is union corruption in this country and in the state of Queensland, in particular. I will go back to other states shortly. What we are trying to do in this place is clean up infrastructure and building. We want to ensure that every dollar we spend goes to the project at hand—whether it is building rail or roads. Let us have a look at some of the problems we have in this country. If you look at the Commonwealth Games and some of the sites that are being built on the Gold Coast, on 9 May The Australian reported:

The construction union could be fined as little as $40,000 for holding 'coercive' twice-daily two-hour stop work meetings that halted construction at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games site and cost the head contractor $700,000.

They have gone very quiet over on the other side of the chamber. The article continues:

For 19 days last year, Queensland's Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union held two meetings every day at the $126 million Carrara Sports and Recreation project in an attempt to force contractor Hansen ­Yuncken into an enterprise agreement.

Federal Court judge John Reeves has already ruled the action was unlawful, but construction watchdog the Australian Building and Construction Commission—

that this government put back on the beat—

yesterday asked for the union to be fined up to $162,000.

The Commonwealth Games sites were brought, effectively, to a halt by this coercive conduct undertaken by the CFMEU. But it does not stop there.

The Federal Circuit Court, on 15 December, handed down penalties totalling $37,500 against the CFMEU and its former Queensland president Dave Hanna for threatening ongoing industrial action at a Brisbane construction site unless a construction firm agreed to sign a secret deal with the union. Six working days were impacted by unprotected industrial action at the Brooklyn on Brookes apartment project in Brisbane in April 2014, prompting the issue of a return to work order by the Fair Work Commission. But these sorts of activities are not just going on in Queensland.

In Western Australia the CFMEU and its most senior national leader, Dave Noonan, and top Western Australian officials were fined $277,000 over unlawful blockades at the $1.2 billion children's hospital in Perth. That is the same thing they did at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane.

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